Class 
Book 







Copyright W.. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 







JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 



IN 



Historical and Political Science 



HERBERT B. ADAMS, Editor 



History is past Politics and Politics are present History. — Freeman 



EXTRA VOLUME 



XVIII 



STATE AID 



TO 



HIGHER EDUCATION 



A SERIES OF ADDRESSES DELIVERED AT THE 
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 



BALTIMORE 

THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 

1898 



**«»ograf)*i, 




T\At{ I .JViH 



iVhH. 



1.C n3 



Copyright, 1898, by the Johns Hopkins Press. 



PRINTED BY 
BALTIMORE, MD., U.S.A. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

State Aid to Higher Education. An Address by President 
Charles K. Adams i 

Statistics on State Aid to Higher Education. By St. George 

L. SioussAT. (Supplementary to President Adams' Address.) 15 

The State Universities of the West. An Address by President 

James B. Angell 29 

A City University. An Address by President Seth Low ... 45 

The Encouragement of Higher Education. An Address by 

Professor Herbert B. Adams 65 



STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION 

AN ADDRESS 

BY 

HON. CHARLES K. ADAMS, LL. D. 

T^resident of the University of IVisconsin and lately 'President of 
Cornell University 

DELIVERED AT THE TWENTY-SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF THE 
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, FEBRUARY 22, 1898 



It has sometimes been asserted, and at other times been 
assumed, that the pohcy of supporting higher education by 
the State is in this country practically a new policy, or one 
which does not rest upon a traditional or historical founda- 
tion. While everyone at all familiar with the trend of 
educational affairs must admit that the growth of State 
universities is one of the most remarkable features of recent 
educational development, very few seem to be aware of the 
fact that State assistance to education, in all its branches, 
has been the traditional policy of the country. Not long 
since I heard an eloquent address on State universities, in 
which the speaker admitted that the movement was irre- 
sistible. He declared that it could no more be stopped, 
either by denominational prejudice, or by outcries against 
socialism or by the advocates of laissez faire, than the build- 
ing of railroads and the running of trains across the plains 
can be stopped by the shouts of Indians or the showers of 
Indian arrows. Occasionally, he said, an engineer or a 
fireman may be shot down, but his place is at once filled 
and the work goes on as before. So it was, he said, with 
the inevitable progress of the State universities. But in 



2 STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 

all his discourse there was an assumption that the move- 
ment is essentially a new one; one that does not rest on any- 
historical basis, but is simply one of the many beneficent 
innovations of this age of progress. 

Such an assumption may be easily accounted for. It is 
true that seventy-five, or fifty, or even twenty-five years 
ago, the policy of supporting universities by the State did 
not attract the very general attention of the public. The 
older institutions, which, during their infancy, had been 
nursed into vigor and efBciency by public support, had 
been turned over to the care of their wealthy children, and 
had ceased to be dependent upon their parents. Schools 
of learning, established either by denominational zeal or 
by private benevolence, had sprung up in all parts of the 
country. These two facts had completely shut out of view 
the true historical sequence of educational development. 

But notwithstanding these more or less general impres- 
sions, it is nevertheless true that beneath and back of these 
specious appearances is the great fact that during the whole 
of the first two hundred years of our history, education in 
all of its grades was chiefly supported by the taxation of all 
the people. This is neither the time nor the place to 
multiply or to dwell upon details; the briefest possible 
notice of our educational methods in Colonial times will 
be enough in this connection to show our general traditional 
policy. 

The great university at Cambridge is sometimes said to 
have been founded by John Harvard; but such a statement 
is true only in a very limited sense, for before that bene- 
factor contributed the half of his fortune and the whole of 
his library and his name to the college an appropriation for 
that purpose had been made by the general court of the 
colony. This was only six years after the founding of 
Boston and six years before the establishment of the famous 
school system of Massachusetts Bay. 

One of the Massachusetts antiquarians has pointed out 
that the Colonial Legislature, before the end of the eigh- 



STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 3 

teenth century, made more than one hundred different 
appropriations for the college, an average of as many as one 
every two years. When the Revolution came on and the 
State w^as called upon to adopt a new constitution, it was 
but the natural continuation of the same beneficent policy 
that led the constitution to command all future Legislatures, 
in the most elaborate and specific terms, to care for all the 
interests of education, and especially the University at Cam- 
bridge. It is an extraordinary fact that the whole of 
Chapter V. of the Constitution of 1780 is entitled: "The 
University at Cambridge and Encouragement of Litera- 
ture." No one can read that remarkable chapter without 
being impressed with the idea that the people of Massa- 
chusetts considered Harvard College at that moment as an 
institution that in all future time must have the most tender 
and the most thoughtful care of all the people of the State.^ 
In the same generation, and in the same spirit, Nathan 
Dane secured for the endowment and support of secondary 
schools a very generous appropriation of lands in that part 
of Massachusetts which now constitutes the State of Maine. 
Whether it was this same Nathan Dane, as Daniel Webster 
asserted, or Dr. Manasseh Cutler, as Dr. Poole afterward 
contended, that secured the most important provisions of 
the " Ordinance of 1787 " for the organization of the North- 
west, it is certain that it was this very spirit of the Massa- 
chusetts Constitution that was embodied in that famous 
ordinance. You remember that besides providing for free 
navigation of the rivers, the establishment of the English 
common law and the prohibition of slavery forever, it 
asserted that '' schools and the means of education shall 
forever be encouraged." 

The course of Massachusetts is not unique nor even 
peculiar. When, in 1701, Yale was founded, the Legislature 
gave a helping hand, and in the course of the century so 
generous and so numerous were the legislative gifts for 

^ Further illustration of the statement of President Adams will be 
found on page 22. 



4 STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 

endowment, for current expenses and for buildings, that 
the first President Dwight, at the end of the last century, 
declared that the State of Connecticut had been the chief 
benefactor of Yale College/ 

It might be pointed out that a similar spirit prevailed in 
the establishment and support of the older colleges in the 
southern part of the country. 

I trust you will pardon me for recalling to your recollec- 
tion the fact that in the State of Maryland, as early as 1692, 
the Legislature passed an act for the encouragement of 
learning, and that in 1723 provision was made for the estab- 
lishment of a school of a higher grade in every county in 
the province. Aid was given in money, lands were appro- 
priated and a poll-tax of twenty shillings was required to be 
paid on negroes and other servants. What followed? In 
1782 the school in Kent county had met with such success 
that it applied for legislative aid, with the result that it 
received from the Legislature a charter as " Washington 
College." Two years later the King William School, at 
Annapolis, was converted by the same authority and for the 
same reasons into " St. John's College." These together 
were denominated the " University of Maryland." 

In North Carolina, Chapter XLI. of the Constitution of 
1776 provided that '' all useful learning shall be duly en- 
couraged and promoted in one or more universities." 

In South Carolina the legislative act of 1700 for the gen- 
eral establishment of schools was followed in 1785 by the 
establishment of three colleges in one day, and within 
twenty-five years more than three-fourths of a million dol- 
lars were appropriated by the Legislature for the support 
of these institutions. 

In Virginia, William and Mary was from the first the 
ward of the colony, and it was even while the Revolutionary 
War was raging that Jefferson urged upon the House of 
Burgesses his remarkable scheme for a comprehensive 

^ See p. 23. 



STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 5 

system of education that should be supported by general 
taxation and should culminate in a university and in the 
liberal establishment of secondary schools. 

One word more 'needs to be said in regard to the educa- 
tional characteristics of the Colonial period. 

In the North there seems to have been an adequate 
appreciation of the fact that the higher education, to be 
successful, must be concentrated within comparatively few 
institutions. This is shown by several incidents in the his- 
tory of the founding of Yale College, for, in the course of 
the seventeenth century, the founding of a college in Con- 
necticut was several times considered by the Colonial Leg- 
islature. Again and again bills were introduced, but until 
the beginning of the next century it was repeatedly decided 
that the population of New England was not yet sufficient 
to support more than one college and, therefore, that their 
energies should not be devoted to the establishment of a 
second institution. And it was for this reason and for this 
only that the establishment of Yale College did not take 
place until more than 60 years after the founding of 
Harvard. 

The speaker then referred to other Eastern institutions 
and said: 

Now, if we turn from the East to the West, or rather 
from the thirteen original States to the new territory be- 
yond the Alleghenies, we find that somewhat analogous 
conditions have prevailed. We see that successes and fail- 
ures have resulted from essentially the same causes. 

Look for a moment at the development of State educa- 
tion. The injunction of the ''Ordinance of 1787" was 
promptly acted upon. The very first session of the First 
Congress provided for the organization of the Northwest 
Territorial government and appropriated lands for the es- 
tablishment of a university in Ohio; and from that day to 
this it has been the policy of Congress, to which there 
has not been a single exception, to give at least two town- 
ships of land in every State for the support of a university. 



6 STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 

Before 1821 it was estimated that more than 6,000,000 
acres of land had been appropriated by Congress to the 
purposes of higher education. These gifts, as you all 
know, and I trust that you will pardon me for recounting 
facts that are so well known, have been supplemented by 
the liberal Morrill act in 1862, by the Hatch act in 1889, 
and by the supplementary Morrill act in 1890. Thus, no 
State has been admitted to the Union since the adoption 
of the Constitution that has not received from the general 
government the means for the establishment and support 
of higher education in substantial accordance with the 
policy which existed throughout the Colonial period/ 

But there is another analogy between the two periods 
that is of supreme interest. In some of the Western States 
the policy prevails which was characteristic of the North; 
in others the policy prevailed which was characteristic of 
the South. For example, in Ohio, in Indiana, and in 
Illinois, the funds arising from the sale of these lands, in- 
stead of being concentrated in the development of one 
institution, were divided and given to two or more. On the 
other hand, in Michigan, in Wisconsin, and in Minnesota, 
the funds were concentrated and were given in each of the 
States to a single university. The results have been en- 
tirely analogous to those which prevailed in the East during 
the Colonial period. In Ohio, Indiana and Illinois the 
State institutions during their early years were compara- 
tively feeble and unimportant, while in the northern tier of 
States the policy of concentration, whatever its vicissitudes, 
from time to time has been crowned with remarkable 
success. 

But while such have been the general results, perhaps I 
should guard against leaving the impression that either suc- 
cess or failure has been without its vicissitudes. Even 
where the policy of concentration has been followed, there 
have been differences of methods that have caused a variety 

^ See p. 17. 



STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 7 

of results. For example, the State of Michigan was ex- 
ceptionally fortunate in the ability and the learning of the 
men to whom the interests of higher education were at first 
intrusted. Not only was the organization of the educational 
system unusually wise, but the administration of the lands 
was conducted with such exceptional skill that the univer- 
sity was generously supported from this source during all 
the early years of its history. It was not until thirty 
years after the founding of the university at Ann Arbor that 
the first appropriation to the university was made by the 
State. Fortunately, it may be said that from 1867 to the 
present day every Legislature, with a single exception, has 
shown its interest in the university by liberal appropriations.^ 

In Wisconsin, on the other hand, a different policy was 
pursued. The State came into the Union at the moment 
when streams of immigration were pouring over the AUe- 
ghenies into the West from all parts of the world. It was 
avowedly for the purpose of attracting immigration that the 
university lands, and for the most part also, even the com- 
mon school lands, were thrown upon the market at nominal 
prices. The policy was adopted of intrusting to the future 
Legislatures of the State the responsibility of supporting 
the schools of all grades which the people in the future 
were to enjoy. The consequence was that during its early 
years the University of Wisconsin was comparatively feeble, 
and it was not until the State aroused itself to redeem the 
pledge it had given when it sacrificed the university lands, 
that the university came forward to take its place among 
the most prosperoiis in the country.^ 

Nor should it be supposed that the history of State insti- 
tutions has been free from perplexities and trying vicissi- 
tudes. Juvenile diseases are not the peculiarities of indi- 
viduals alone. But just as these diseases, however annoying 
and perplexing, are no reason for abandoning humanity as 
a failure, so it may be said that in the history of education 
experience has shown that the vitality and strength of the 

*See p. 19. 



O STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 

system as a whole have generally been sufficient to overcome 
all the weaknesses and the corruptions of early years, and 
bring the universities out into the triumphant strength and 
prosperity of vigorous manhood. Ignorance in regard to 
methods of organization, the spirit of peculation and specu- 
lation, too often characteristic of frontier civilization, even 
the cupidity of grasping and dishonest men and the insane 
desire for crude and absurd innovations, have, as a rule, 
sooner or later given way to a just respect for the results of 
experience and an inflexible determination to provide liber- 
ally from the common treasury for the common good. Even 
those States which have been most unfortunate in their 
early history have finally come to see their mistakes, and 
have done everything possible to correct them. In the end 
the States have almost, or quite, without exception, profited 
by their early follies, and have settled down to wiser 
methods. 

Ohio has given up the efifort to nurse its three State 
colleges into greatness and has concentrated its liberality 
upon the new State University at Columbus. Indiana, re- 
luctant to give up widely separated buildings and equip- 
ment, and unwilling to incur the criticism of interested 
localities, still persists in dividing its support between two 
institutions. Illinois has at length come to see the path of 
manifest destiny, and is giving liberal support to the long 
neglected University at Champaign. The other State uni- 
versities have generally been framed with greater or less 
fidelity upon the successful model of Michigan, and they 
are all now supported chiefly by legislative appropriations. 

The same spirit has prevailed with regard to schools of 
secondary grade. Everywhere the high school is the centre 
of local educational interest. Attention has often been 
called to the fact that the high school throughout the east- 
ern part of the country is so overshadowing the private 
schools that only those academies that are richly endow^ed 
find it easy to resist the tendency to decay. A still more 
irresistible tendency in the same direction is dominant in 



STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. Q 

the newer States, for the reason that in those regions the 
private academies never get a fair start. The consequence 
is tliat the high school is everywhere. Its building is often 
the most conspicuous structure in the frontier town and 
the chief object of civic pride. Chicago has twelve high 
schools, each with its four-year courses, organized to fur- 
nish a good fitting for college. Michigan has more schools 
of this grade than has Massachusetts, and Wisconsin and 
Iowa have more in proportion to their population than has 
Connecticut. Not only is the number of schools greater, 
but the number of p.upils in the schools is greater. Accord- 
ing to the report of the Commissioner of Education for 
1895-6, recently published, the total number of pupils in 
secondary schools in the North Atlantic Division in 1895-6 
was 168,529, while the number in the North Central 
Division was 248,962. In point of numbers there were 
80,000 more in the North Central Division than in the 
North Atlantic Division. 

Nor is this striking difiference accounted for by an excess 
of population, for the same authority shows that in every 
1000 inhabitants there are in the secondary schools of all 
classes in the North Atlantic Division 8.06 pupils; while in 
every 1000 inhabitants in the North Central Division there 
are as many as 10.03 pupils. In other words, in the North 
Central Division, in every 1000 of the inhabitants, the 
number of pupils in the schools of secondary grade, includ- 
ing the high schools and the academies, is about 24 per 
cent, greater than the number in each 1000 inhabitants of 
the North Atlantic States. 

If this system of public support has such success in the 
secondary schools, what is to be said of its success in the 
schools of collegiate and university grade? 

Unfortunately for the purposes of comparison, the State 
institutions of higher grade do not occupy the field alone. 
The condition of higher education in the Central West is 
analogous to the condition of secondary education in the 
East, in the fact that the field is occupied by both classes — 



10 STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 

that is to say, by those institutions privately endowed and 
those supported by taxation. But the results of the sys- 
tem are not difficult to discover. The Commissioner's re- 
port already quoted gives the number of students in higher 
education in 1896 in the North Atlantic Division as 44,570, 
while in the North Central Division it was 50,290. 

If we turn from these interesting figures to a study of 
the comparative growth of public and private institutions 
of higher grade, we find still more striking results. These 
results were presented not long since by Chancellor Mac- 
Lean of the University of Nebraska in his inaugural ad- 
dress. Though I have not verified these figures, I assume 
them to be correct. According to this authority, in the ten 
years included between 1885 and 1895 the increase of 
students of collegiate and university grade in the ten rep- 
resentative colleges and universities of New England, in- 
cluding Harvard and Yale, was 20 per cent.; the increase 
in ten representative private or denominational colleges in 
the North Central States was 14^ per cent., while the 
increase in the ten representative State universities was no 
less than 320 per cent. I almost shrink from giving these 
figures, for I know that I am in an atmosphere where num- 
bers count for very little and quality counts for very much; 
but I am sure that no one at all qualified to judge will 
claim that these additions have been made by any lowering 
of the standards. On the contrary, it is as certain that the 
standards are constantly rising, as it is that the numbers of 
students are constantly increasing. Many who have had 
abundant opportunities of judging will assert that the 
standards of scholarship in the State universities compare 
favorably with those of the private institutions, either in the 
West or in the East. 

Another fact ought not to be overlooked. The tendency 
is everywhere growing to co-ordinate more and more 
closely the several grades of schools. There are many who 
claim, and the number is probably increasing, that the 
studies most needed as a preparation for college are pre- 
cisely the studies most needed by those who have no inten- 



STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. II 

tion of going to college. It follows that the colleges and 
universities are coming more and more to regard them- 
selves as the natural continuation of the high school, in 
much the same sense as the German university is the 
natural continuation of the Realschule and the Gymnasium. 
Under the impulse of this belief the chaos that has hitherto 
prevailed in our educational methods is gradually giving 
place to systematic organization, and we are coming to have 
some approach to what may fairly be called an organic 
educational system. 

This tendency is unquestionably aided by the prevalent 
system providing for the examination of high schools by 
officers of the university. This system, introduced by 
Michigan nearly thirty years ago, has taken root in one 
form or another in nearly every State. The rigor with 
which this examination is carried on varies greatly in 
the several States. In California, for example, the instruc- 
tion in every study in every high school is inspected by a 
professor especially qualified to judge of teaching in that 
particular study, and such an examination is at present 
insisted upon every year. A report on the condition of the 
school is made, not only to the university, but also to the 
School Board. Who can fail to see that such a system 
must have a prodigious influence in elevating the pedagog- 
ical standards of the secondary schools? In other States 
the system is less perfectly organized and perhaps less 
perfectly administered, but in nearly or quite every State 
some system of examination and articulation is established. 

Perhaps it may not be out of place to say a word in re- 
gard to the practical question of method of support. There 
is considerable variety. The public money that goes to the 
high school in addition to the amount raised by local taxa- 
tion is systematically provided for by the Legislature, and 
is generally distributed on the basis of the number of pupils 
in attendance at approved schools. Standards are kept up 
by ofificial examinations provided for by the Department of 
Education, as no public money is given to schools falling 

below the standards required. 
2 



12 STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 

Methods of supporting higher education are still more 
variable. In a few of the States the universities are still 
dependent chiefly or entirely upon the amount received 
from the Federal Government and the more or less pre- 
carious annual or biennial legislative appropriation; but it 
is worthy of note that the tendency has set strongly in the 
direction of a permanent provision by taxation that may be 
relied upon year after year. The growth of this tendency 
may be illustrated by one or two examples. 

In Michigan provision was made some thirty years ago 
for an annual tax of one-twentieth of a mill on every dollar. 
Supplementing this tax were specific appropriations for 
specific purposes. This method, however, was unsatisfac- 
tory, because of the embarrassing uncertainty of the uni- 
versity authorities in regard to the income that would be 
at their disposal. It soon came to be seen that nothing 
is more essential than stability of purpose; consequently, 
three years ago the policy was modified by lessening the 
number of specific appropriations and raising the amount 
of the annual tax to one-sixth of a mill upon the dollar.^ 

In Wisconsin, one-tenth of a mill was voted in 1876. A 
little later this amount was increased to one-eighth; in 1891 
one-tenth of a mill was added for six years, but before the 
six years elapsed the tax was made permanent. In 1895 
an additional tax of one-fifth of a mill was levied for two 
years, which, in turn, was made permanent in 1897. Thus 
the Legislature has provided for a permanent tax of 17-40 
of a mill, which at presents yields an income of about $254,- 
000 a year. Besides this amount it turns over one per cent, 
of what is known as the railroad license income for the 
college of engineering; $12,000 a year for institute work, 
and certain other small sums for specific purposes. The 
total income from the State is somewhat more than $278,- 
000 per year. It need hardly be added that this amount 
is exclusive of the sums realized from the several Con- 
gressional grants, from bequests and from fees for tuition."* 

^ See p. 26. 



STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. I3 

Other illustrations might be given, but it is unnecessary, 
and I fear that I have already ventured into the domain of 
tediousness in the presentation of these concrete details. 
One or two brief considerations and I will relieve your 
patience. 

In the States added to the Union since the beginning 
of this century, there is great variety of method, but there 
is always a remarkable uniformity of belief that higher 
education cannot be adequately provided for except by 
State support. Here and there, it is true, outcries are 
still heard against the system of taxation for high schools 
and universities, but such outcries seldom, perhaps I 
ought to say never, result in any change of policy. They 
sometimes, perhaps, modify or lessen the amount of appro- 
priations for a time, but they add to the agitation of the 
subject, which, in the end, invariably strengthens the cause 
they were intended to defeat. Perhaps it ought to be said 
that another effect is to condemn the agitator to speedy 
political obscurity. An interesting monograph might be 
written to show that the most facile descent to political 
oblivion is the way that is ever kept open to him who 
achieves notoriety by attacking the State support of higher 
education. Not a few political aspirants in the course of 
the last fifty years have attempted this method of climbing 
into popular favor, but it would be difficult to name a single 
one whose political career long survived. They have either 
been converted or hopelessly lost. In the picturesque 
language of the region, " Such a man makes a good 
stranger." The people may submit to crudities and vaga- 
ries, but they will not tolerate attacks on what they persist 
in regarding as one of the most vital interests of the State. 
They not only reject the dogma that the common schools 
are enough, but they boldly proclaim and insist upon the 
doctrine that the welfare of the commonwealth demands 
the higher education of the few quite as much as the ele- 
mentary education of the many. 

Nor can it be successfully denied that the affairs of the 



14 STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 

State University have, on the whole, been wisely, econo- 
mically and successfully administered. That mistakes have 
not sometimes been made, no reasonable man can assert, 
but the privately endowed institutions also live in glass 
houses. Everybody remembers the witticism of Mr. Evarts 
in explaining why Washington was able to throw a silver 
dollar across the Potomac. President Angell has said that 
the University of Michigan has been able to make a dollar 
go farther and bring back more than any other institution 
in the country. The proud boast is justified by the re- 
markable history of that institution. Others have been 
apt pupils and have caught the knack of similar success. 
Boards of regents have come more and more to be wisely 
organized and fewer and fewer mistakes have been made as 
time has advanced. One doubt after another has died away, 
and that confidence has gradually been established which is 
now inviting and securing the union of private benevolence 
and public support. As time progresses, the two methods 
will more and more go hand in hand. It may confidently 
be asserted that there is nothing whatever in the history of 
State universities to prevent a happy marriage of the two 
systems. Fortunate, indeed, is the university that can 
bring to such a union the dower of a great name and a 
great history; and still more fortunate is the commonwealth 
which can have the opportunity of such an alliance. 



STATISTICS ON STATE AID TO HIGHER 

EDUCATION/^ 

By St. George L. Sioussat. 

The object of this statement is to show: 

I. What some of the States of the Union have appropriated 

in the last few years towards the support of their State 

Universities. 

II. What help has been given by the State Leg-islatures to 
universities and colleges upon private foundations. 

III. How some of the money for these purposes has been raised. 

IV. What States exempt the property of educational institu- 
tions from taxation, and the extent of such exemptions. 

I. APPROPRIATIONS TO STATE UNIVERSITIES. 

It will be convenient to consider these institutions in 
three groups : — i. State Universities of the South ; 2. State 
Universities of the Middle West; 3. State Universities of 
the Far West. 

In each of these groups only the most important will be 
selected for exemplification. 

I. State Universities of the South. 
University of Virginia and University of Texas. 

University of Virginia. 

Starting nearest home, we find that the University of 
Virginia has received from the State annual appropriations 

*In tliese statistics, tlie figures for appropriations of early years are 
taken from Blackinar's Pederal and State Aid to Higlier Uducntiun 
(Bureau of Education: Contributions to American GducationnI 
History, No. 9.) Tli»> fignres for recent yeai-s are taken from tlie 
Annual Beports of the IJ. ^. Commissioner of £dncation, and from 
State LaTTS. 



l6 STATISTICS ON STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 

ever since its foundation in 1818. As the needs of the 
University have grown, the HberaHty of the State has in- 
creased, as may be seen from the following State appro- 
priations : 

1818-76 (except 1863-65), $15,000 per annum. . . . $825,000 
1876-84, 30,000 " .... 240,000 
1884-95, 40,000 " .... 440,000 
1895-97, 50,000 " .... 100,000 
1823 and 1884, special appropriations for build- 
ings, etc 122,000 

Total State appropriations $1,727,000 

1896-97, income of University from State appropria- 
tions $50,000 

income of University from all other 

sources 794^5 

Total income $129,425 

Besides appropriations to her University, Virginia has 
from early times appropriated something towards the sup- 
port of the other colleges in her domain, such as William 
and Mary College, the Virginia Military Institute, etc. 
Her appropriations for these colleges (i. e. apart from the 
University) up to 1896 aggregated $849,500. 

The entire sum of Maryland's appropriations to all the 
colleges within her borders is not more than $885,000, an 
amount about equal to Virginia's appropriations to colleges 
other than the University. 

Although, according to the U. S. Census for 1890, the 
entire value of Virginia's real and personal property as 
assessed for taxation is $415,249,107, while that of Mary- 
land is assessed at $529,494,777, Virginia has appropriated 
$1,700,000 more than Maryland for higher education, and 
has appropriated it to the leading institution in the State — 
the University of Virginia. 



STATISTICS ON STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. \J 

University of Texas. 

After Texas became a State she reserved over 3,000,000 
acres of public land for the foundation and support of a 
university. When it was found that the income from this 
land was inadequate to meet the growing needs of the insti- 
tution, the State began a system of yearly appropriations, 
which aggregate $700,000. The largest annual grant (a 
special appropriation) was in 1892, when the University 

received $107,000 

In 1894-95 income from State appropriation was. . 25,000 
" 1895-96 " " " " " 75,000 

" 1896-97 " " '' " '' 22,500 

While these represent the more important of the Southern 
State Universities, they by no means complete the list. 
The University of Georgia, for instance, has received over 
$700,000 from the State; while South Carolina, with a 
taxable basis (Census of 1890) of $168,262,669, not one- 
third as large as Maryland's, has appropriated at different 
times to four colleges within her borders sums aggregating 
little less than $3,000,000, or more than three times as much 
as Maryland. 

2. State Universities of the Middle West. 

The Universities of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wiscon- 
sin, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas and Nebraska. 

Introductory. — Those States whose domains were included 
in the Northwest Territory received from the United States, 
by provision of the Ordinance of 1787, the grant of two 
townships of public land, the proceeds of which were to 
be devoted to the establishment and maintenance of a sem- 
inary of learning. As the country farther West became 
settled and formed into territories, similar provisions and 
grants of land were made by the United States. The 
amount of the funds realized from the sale or lease of these 
lands varied directly with the care taken in the management 
and disposition of them. It is important, however, to note 
that in each State some proceeds were reahzed, which were 



l8 STATISTICS ON STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 

devoted to a " Permanent Productive Fund " for the sup- 
port of the State University. These national land grant 
funds were supplemented in some cases by private endow- 
ment, and in others by loans or gifts by the State of land 
or money for building. The interest from these permanent 
funds, the tuition fees (where such are charged), and the 
annual appropriation from the State are the three principal 
sources of income of the Western State Universities. 

University of Indiana. 

The State of Indiana in 1883, by legislative enactment, 
levied a tax for twelve years of one-half of one per cent on 
each $100 of the assessed valuation of the State. This was 
calculated to yield in twelve years the sum of $700,000, 
which was to be known as the " Permanent Endowment 
Fund of the University." Before this, there had been, 
from 1867-73, ^^ annual appropriation of $8,000. This was 
increased in 1873 to $23,000. If to these appropriations we 
add special appropriations for buildings, etc., to the amount 
of $82,000, we get a grand total of $1,529,000 as Indiana's 
contribution to her University. The appropriation for 1896- 
97 was $80,000. 

University of Illinois. 

Illinois was for many years somewhat behind her neigh- 
bors in expenditures upon her State University. From 
1869 to 1893 her entire appropriations aggregated only 

$754,380 
But in the years 1893-97 Illinois appropriated. . . . 744,666 

Total appropriation $1,499,046 

Income from Income from 

State Appropriation. all sources. 

1893-94 $141,882 

1894-95 148,269 $244,677 

1895-96 333,300 444,593 
1896-97 121,215 226,592 

$744,666 $915,862 



STATISTICS ON STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. IQ 

University of Michigan. 

This institution has always been, and still is, one of the 
most influential of the universities of the Middle West. 
The cause of this superiority is twofold: (i) Able manage- 
ment for a long period of time; (2) ample support which the 
University has received from the State. In thirty years, 
from 1867 to 1897, the State appropriations to all the de- 
partments of the University have amounted to $3,018,047. 

Below are given the appropriations for the last four years 
and the total income for the last three years: 

V Income from Income from t«»o1 t ««,» 

Year. e^ ^ a • • n .u lotal Income. 

State Appropriation, all other sources. 

i893"94 $250,000 

1894-95 231,722 $202,192 $433,914 

1895-96 194,333 210,365 404,698 

1896-97 197,000 224,635 421,635 



$873,055 



In the following table the figures in the first column rep- 
resent the valuation of real and personal property as assessed 
for taxation in the States of Michigan and Maryland. The 
second column gives the income, from all sources other than 
State appropriation, of all the universities and colleges in 
the State (in Maryland, including the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity), while the third column gives the State appropria- 
tions to all universities and colleges for the year 1895-96. 

Assessed Income from all State 

Valuation. sources except State. Approp'tion. 

Michigan $898,155,532 $367,913 $194,333 

Maryland 529,494,777 234,462 20,575 

Ratio of Maryland 

to Michigan 1:1.7 1:1.5 1:9.4 

University of Wisconsin. 

The total appropriations of Wisconsin to the State Uni- 
versity aggregate $2,883,668. 



20 STATISTICS ON STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 



The appropriations for the last four years follow 



Year. 


State Appropriation. 


Total Income 


1893-94 


$276,095 




1894-95 


274,150 


$389,150 


1895-96 


282,000 


400,000 


1896-97 


283,476 


394,207 



University of Missouri. 

The University of Missouri has received altogether from 
the State $1,590,208. In 1892 was the largest single appro- 
priation, $350,000. 



Year. 


State Appropriation. 


Total Income, 


1895-96 


%77,S77 


$195,181 


1896-97 


66,318 


183,777 



University of lozva. 

Total State appropriations, $1,203,026. The largest sin- 
gle appropriation, that for 1891-92, was $90,500. 

Year. Income from State Appropriation. Income from all sources. 



1893-94 


$67,000 




1894-95 


68,354 


$131,384 


1895-96 


65,500 


138,003 


1896-97 


76,000 


148,377 



Assessed valuation of property, Iowa $519,246,110 

Maryland 529,494,777 

University of Minnesota. 

Aggregate of State appropriations, $1,050,953. 
Income from 1894 to 1897: 



Year. 


Income from State. 


Total Income 


1894-95 


$150,800 


$284,457 


1895-96 


110,071 


268,409 


1896-97 


82,333 


284,091 



STATISTICS ON STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 21 

University of Kansas. 

Aggregate of State appropriations, $1,302,010, 
Income from 1894 to 1897: 



Year. 


Income from State. 


Total Income. 


1894-95 


$ 86,500 


$ 95.500 


1895-96 


108,000 


116,410 


1896-97 


100,800 


109,020 




Assessment for Taxation. 


Total State Aid 


Kansas 


$347717.219 


$1,302,010 


Maryland 


529,494,777 


885,000 



University of Nebraska. 

Aggregate of State appropriations, $1,645,456. 
Special appropriations : 

1891-92 $246,650 

1893-94 118,170 

1894-95 60,000 ' 

1895-96 6s,S72 

1896-97 158,072 

Total Assessment for Taxation. Total State Appropriation. 

Nebraska $184,770,305 $1,645,456 

Maryland 529,494,777 885,000 

3. State Universities of the Far West. 
University of California. 
Aggregate of State appropriations, $1,901,702. 
Income for 1893-97: 

-.r T c c . Income from all t- . i t 

Year. Income from State. „., _ ^„„..^ .. Total Income. 

other sources. 

1893-94 $120,137 

1894-95 119.825 $163,752 $283,577 

1895-96 119,709 167,001 286,710 

1896-97 177.761 161,090 338,851 

Besides these appropriations, the State, in the early period 
of the University, donated certain swamp lands for the crea- 
tion of a " Permanent Endowment Fund " for the Uni- 
versity. 



22 STATISTICS ON STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 

These lands sold for $ 811,500 

The income from this fund for 23 years, at 

$50,000 per annum, would be 1,150,000 

$1,961,500 
State appropriations 1,901,702 

$3,863,202 

Nearly four million dollars were contributed by California 
to her University for its foundation and income. 

Note. — The totals or aggregates given above, with the exception 
of those of Virginia and Maryland, are in reality too small by amounts 
ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 or over. The reason of this is the 
fact that no figures are to be obtained for 1891-92. 

II. STATE AID TO INSTITUTIONS UPON 
PRIVATE FOUNDATIONS. 

A. MASSACHUSETTS. 

I. Harvard University. 

Although very early the object of private benefac- 
tion, yet throughout the colonial period Harvard 
College was obliged to depend for assistance 
upon the appropriations of the General Court of 
INIassachusetts. These appropriations from 1636 
to 1786 aggregated, roughly $115,797 ' 

By act of 1814 it was provided that ten-sixteenths 
of the bank tax, amounting to $10,000, should 
be paid annually to the college for a term of ten 
years, yielding in all the sum of 100,000 

The State of Massachusetts contributed to the 
foundation, etc., of the Harvard Museum of Com- 
parative Zoology (1859-74) 235,000 

Other appropriations aggregated 99,000 

Adding land grants to value of about 46,000 

Grand total circa $595^797 

' A sum which in reality represents values at least ten times as 
great as it would to-day. 



STATISTICS ON STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 23 

2. Williams College. 

Beginning with land grants and part of a bank tax, the 
appropriations of the State of Massachusetts to WilHams 
College aggregate $157,000. 

3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

While not strictly speaking a college or university, this 
institute's great reputation warrants the following state- 
ment: 

In 1888 the Massachusetts Legislature made a gift to the 
Institute of Technology of $200,000. In return, the Insti- 
tute promised to found twenty free scholarships. For the 
year 1895-96 the income of the Institute was $290,187. In 
spite of this large income the expenses exceeded so much 
as to leave a deficit at the end of the year of $15,935.29. 
Upon application to the Legislature a grant was obtained 
last year (1896-97) of $25,000 per annum for six years, 
aggregating $150,000. 

B. CONNECTICUT. 

Yale University. 

Like Harvard, Yale received constant support from the 
Colonial legislature. Appropriations took the form now of 
land grants, now of taxes on rum, etc., now of bills of 
credit. While it is impossible to estimate the present value 
of these appropriations exactly, if we say, roughly, about 
$122,500, this will probably be an undervaluation. 

Besides the above, Amherst, Dartmouth, Bowdoin and 
others have received smaller sums from time to time. 

C. NEW YORK. 

I. Columbia University. 

Columbia grew out of King's College. This was founded 
in 1754 under the royal government. After the Revolution 
the college was reorganized under the name of Columbia 
College. State appropriations to King's College and Co- 
lumbia College aggregate $140,000. 



24 STATISTICS ON STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 

2. Union College. 

From the time of its first charter, in 1795, to 1804 

State aid amounted to $ 78,112 

Since then, by lottery grants, the State has given . . 280,000 

Total grants $358,112 

3. Hamilton College. 

Founded 1812. Total appropriation $120,000. 
Other New York colleges which have received State aid 
are Geneva, Cornell, University of Rochester, etc. 

D. PENNSYLVANIA. 

I. University of Pennsylvania. 

Penn's Grammar School (1697), the Friends Public 
School, Franklin's Academy, and the University of Penn- 
sylvania represent one institution in several different phases 
of development. Franklin Academy was chartered in 1753, 
and two years later was made a college. In 1779 some of 
its officers were suspected of disloyalty and its charter was 
taken away. After the Revolution a charter was granted to 
a new corporation with the title '' University of Pennsyl- 
vania," and an annual appropriation was made. In 1789, 
however, the old corporation was restored, and the two were 
amalgamated in the University of Pennsylvania. 

Between 1789 and 1889 State appropriations for the 
assistance of the University amounted to $275,000. 

Below are given the income from State appropriations 
for the last three years, the income from all other sources, 
and the total income. 



Year. 


Income from State. 


income irom an 
Other sources. 


Total Income, 


1894-95 


$ 70,121 


$339,255 


$409,376 


1895-96 


24,606 


402,064 


426,670 


1896-97 


125,000 


424,019 


549.019 



By act of the Legislature, approved July 29, 1897, appro- 
priations were made for two years, beginning June i, 1897, 
as follows: 



STATISTICS ON STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 2^ 

1. For maintenance of patients in the University- 

Hospital $ 50,000 

2. For the general maintenance of the University, 100,000 

3. For the general expenses of the University. . . . 50,000 

Total $200,000 

or $100,000 a year. 
2. Lehigh University. 

This University was founded by Judge Asa Packer, and 
was chartered in 1866. The following is from the com- 
ments of the Governor, Daniel H. Hastings, in his executive 
approval of the bill appropriating $150,000 to Lehigh Uni- 
versity for the two years beginning June i, 1897: 

" For twenty-six years the Packer endowment was amply 
sufficient to meet the current expenses of the institution. 
During the last four years, by reason of the Lehigh Valley 
Railroad stock, which constitutes the endowment, failing 
to pay dividends, the income of the University has been 
entirely cut off. The trustees and friends of the University, 
however, with confidence that the embarrassment is only 
temporary, raised from their own private funds a sufficient 
sum of money to continue the work. It has been made 
clear to me that the financial embarrassment of the Uni- 
versity is merely temporary, and its managers have come 
before the General Assembly asking an appropriation of 
$200,000 to bridge over their difficulties. . . . After almost 
a generation of successful philanthropic w^ork, this call for 
temporary aid appeals alike to the sympathy and patriotism 
of our people, and for these reasons I have been constrained 
to withhold executive approval from only one-fourth of the 
sum appropriated by the General Assembly." 

The items were as follows: 

1. For maintenance $100,000 | . . 

2. For general expenses 50,000 J 

3. For general educational purposes, 25,000)^. . 

4. For special maintenance of plant, 25,000 J 

Total appropriation $150,000 



26 STATISTICS ON STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 

III. HOW SOME OF THIS MONEY HAS BEEN 

RAISED. 

Not to dwell upon the Massachusetts levy, upon each 
family, of one peck of corn or its equivalent for the support 
of Harvard College, we find that in this century many 
different methods of raising money have been employed. 
Bank taxes, lotteries and rents have furnished parts of many 
college funds. To-day two methods seem to be most 
favored : 

(i) Provision for university appropriations in the general 
State budget. 

(2) Special taxes, at given rates. 

As examples of the first method we have Virginia, Penn- 
sylvania, Massachusetts, and most of the older States. 

As examples of the second method we have the Western 
States: Michigan, etc. This will require fuller mention. 

Indiana, as was shown above, levied a tax in 1883 for 
twelve years of five mills on each $100 of taxable property, 
calculated to yield $700,000. 

Michigan, during 1873-93, raised part of her appropria- 
tions by a tax of one-twentieth of a mill on each dollar of 
property. This was increased in 1894 to one-sixth of a mill, 
yielding about $150,000 per annum. 

Minnesota in 1897 raised her former tax of fifteen-hun- 
dredths of a mill to twenty-three hundredths of a mill, 
causing a net increase of about $40,000 per annum. 

Wisconsin, after raising her annual tax from one-tenth of 
a mill to one-eighth, in 1891 added a tax of one-tenth of a 
mill for six years. Before the six years had passed, this 
was made a permanent tax. In 1895 was levied an addi- 
tional tax for two years of one-fifth of a mill. In 1897 this, 
too, was made permanent; so that at present there is a 
permanent tax of seventeen-fortieths of a mill, which yields 
annually about $254,000. 

California up to this year levied a tax of one-tenth of a 
mill. For 1898 she has raised it to one-fifth of a mill. It 
is estimated that this will increase the appropriation by 
about $120,000. 



STATISTICS ON STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 2/ 

IV. EXEMPTION FROM TAXATION. 

1. Constitutional provisions for the exemption of educa- 
tional property from taxation. 

Colleges, universities and seminaries of learning are ex- 
empted from taxation by the Constitutions of the following 
States : Georgia/ Minnesota, Louisiana and South Carolina. 

Any public property held for educational purposes is 
constitutionally exempted from taxation in Alabama,^ 
Florida/ Illinois/ Indiana/ Kansas/ Nebraska/ Nevada/ 
North Carolina/ Oregon/ South Carolina/ Tennessee/ 
Virginia/ and West Virginia. 

2. Provision by statute laws for the exemption of educa- 
tional property from taxation : 

(i) Productive property, or such as is held as an invest- 
ment for the support of non-State schools, is exempt from 
taxation in the following States: Connecticut, Indiana, Ken- 
tucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, 
North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Ver- 
mont, Virginia. 

(2) Unproductive property, or such as is invested in 
buildings, grounds, libraries, apparatus, etc., used and occu- 
pied exclusively for educational purposes by non-State 
schools, is exempt from taxation in the following States: 
Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, 
Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New 
Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, 
South Carolina, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, Wis- 
consin. 

(3) State in which all school property not belonging to 
State institutions is taxed : California.^ 

^ In these States the Constitution provides, in each case men- 
tioned, that the property referred to ' ' may ' ' be exempted from taxa- 
tion ; in other States the declaration is imperative, 

"^ These statements were taken from Blackmar' s Federal and State 
Aid to Higher education. 



28 STATISTICS ON STATE AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION. 



ADDENDA. 

TAXABLE BASIS, STATE APPROPRIATIONS AND 
TOTAL COLLEGE INCOMES. 

T^*-,! /vf Qt-,.^ -,„ Total Income for 

Value of property in i^^^'f!;^;^ "o^?" 1895-6, from a// 

State as assessed L'?"n ': v ' «i ^^ll '"^rces, of all the 

for taxation, 96 to Un vers. ties Universities and 

Census of 1890. ^""l^^i,?!'!"" Colleges in the 

tnebtate. State.i 

New York $3785.910.313 $151,046 $2,576,396 

Pennsylvania ... 2,659,796,909 335.740 1,603,436 

Illinois 809,682,926 333.300 1,595,180 

Ohio 1,778,138,477 185,785 1,059.363 

California 1,101,136,431 119,709 628,091 

Missouri 887,975,928 77677 623,921 

Michigan 898,155,532 194.333 562,246 

Wisconsin 577,066,252 282,000 525,660 

Indiana 856,838,472 40,000 436,060 

Tennessee 382,760,191 20,600 434,143 

Iowa 519,246,1 10 65,500 387.405 

Minnesota 588,820,213 110,071 368,955 

Virginia 415,249,107 65,500 340,292 

Kansas 347,717,219 108,000 270,327 

Texas 780,898,605 75,ooo 265,974 

Maryland 529,494,777 20,575 255,037 

Nebraska 184,770,305 63,572 235,547 

Kentucky 547,596,788 35,556 215,209 

Washington .... 217,612,897 70,000 126,305 

Massachusetts .. 2,154,134,626 1,676,256 

Connecticut 358,913,956 852,146 

New Jersey 893,859,866 313.500 

Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey, the States 
in which are located the Universities of Harvard, Yale and 
Princeton, now give no regular or annual State aid. 



^ This of course excludes Normal Schools and all Institutions not 
giving the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The above figures are to be 
found in the U. S. Census for 1890 and the Report of the Commis- 
sioner of Education for the year 1895-6. 



THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE 

WEST 

AN ADDRESS 

BY 

HON. JAMES B. ANGELL, LL. D. 

President of the University of {Michigan 

DELIVERED AT THE SEVENTEENTH COMMEMORATION OF THE 
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, FEBRUARY 22, 1893 



You have enriched this day, long so dear and sacred to 
all Americans, with new and appropriate associations. 
When you decided to establish an annual festival on which 
to pay tribute to the memory of the founder of this great 
school of learning, and to confer together on some of the 
large problems of higher education, you were led by a 
happy inspiration to choose the birthday of Washington, 
not the least of whose titles to the affectionate regard of 
American scholars was his profound interest in advanced 
education. This he evinced in many ways, but especially 
by his generous efforts for the establishment of a national 
university. 

In attempting to discharge the honorable duty to which 
I am now called, it has seemed to me that I should not be 
departing from the worthy traditions which dedicate this 
hour to the consideration of educational themes, if I should 
speak of the State universities of the West, their origin, 
their peculiar organization, the embarrassments they have 
experienced, the benefits they have conferred and their 
probable future. 



30 THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE WEST. 

The history of education in this country during the last 
sixty years records no more striking phenomenon than the 
rise and rapid growth of these universities in every State 
from Ohio and Michigan on the east to CaUfornia on the 
west, and from the Dakotas on the north to Texas on the 
south. Some of them are yet in a nascent stage of exist- 
ence, because the States whose names they bear have only 
just emerged from the territorial life. Others are fairly 
started on a prosperous career, though many of the urgent 
wants of a good college are still unsupplied to them. A few 
have reached a development which entitles them to chal- 
lenge comparison with the older and richly endowed insti- 
tutions in the Eastern States, whether we consider the 
number of their students, their educational appliances or 
the ability of their faculties. That they should in half a 
century or less have overtaken universities and colleges 
which had been growing in the Atlantic States under aus- 
picious circumstances for a century and a half or two cen- 
turies is a fact of striking interest and importance. It 
certainly merits the attention even of this section of the 
country, in which the endowments of the higher institutions 
of learning are furnished almost wholly by private benefi- 
cence. To travelers from the continent of Europe, where 
the universities are all sustained by the States, it is the 
organization of the Eastern, not that of the Western uni- 
versities, which appears anomalous. 

But although several of the colleges and universities in 
the East, including Harvard and Yale and Williams and the 
earlier collegiate institutions in Maryland and the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology and all the agricultural 
colleges, some of which are constituent parts of the old 
classical colleges of New England and the Middle States, 
have been aided by the States or by the United States or 
by both, still, unless I am mistaken, there is a widespread 
impression upon the Atlantic seaboard that the life of the 
State universities of the West hangs on a very precarious 
tenure, and that in spite of the fact that nearly every one 



THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE WEST. 3I 

of them is growing with great rapidity and that every new 
State, on its admission to the Union, proceeds at once to 
organize its university, these institutions are destined to 
come to the ground in ruins. Pardon me for saying that 
these apprehensions are largely due to a lack of familiarity 
with State universities and with the laudable zeal of the 
West for higher education. Their history shows that they 
have had as natural and normal a growth as the endowed 
institutions of the East, that they are rooted in the very 
life and conditions of the people, and that though they must 
encounter obstacles, yet if they are conducted with discre- 
tion they have every prospect of a useful and successful 
future. 

I. The State universities have a noble origin. They owe 
their birth to the inspiring command which rang forth 
from that great instrument that dedicated the Northwest 
forever to freedom, morality and intelligence, the Ordinance 
of 1787. While providing that the foot of no slave should 
ever curse the soil of that vast domain, from which five 
imperial States have been carved, it also declared, in words 
that are as familiar and as dear to the inhabitants of those 
States as the most precious words of the Declaration of 
Independence, " religion, morality and knowledge being 
necessary to good government and the happiness of man- 
kind, schools and the means of education shall forever be 
encouraged." 

The same spirit which led to the adoption of the Ordi- 
nance prompted Congress to make appropriations of lands 
at an early day for the establishment of a university and of 
schools in Ohio. And from that day to this every State 
which has been admitted to the Union has received a gift 
of lands for the endowment of a university. Congressmen 
from the East have united with Congressmen from the West 
in favoring this benign policy. If anything is settled by 
precedent, it is that the federal government is to encourage 
every new State to establish a university by an endowment 
of public lands. It is upon federal endowments that all the 



32 THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE WEST. 

State universities of the West have originally depended for 
their maintenance. We can hardly suppose that the framers 
of the Ordinance could have foreseen the far-reaching con- 
sequences of their action. It is doubtful if any statute was 
ever passed in our history which will prove to have been 
more fruitful of lasting good. 

As the young universities grew, and the proceeds of the 
national endowments proved insufficient to meet their 
needs, the States were called on to assist. They have 
made generous appropriations of money. Several of them 
regularly levy a tax of a fraction of a mill on each hundred 
dollars of property, and in addition at each session of the 
Legislature raise a further sum of from $50,000 to $100,000 
or more a year for the aid of their university. Michigan 
has raised by taxation over $2,000,000 in all for her uni- 
versity. The Wisconsin Legislature, in a recent session, 
besides aiding in meeting the current expenses of the State 
University, gave $300,000 for a science hall. When Mis- 
souri received her portion of the direct tax, which Congress 
refunded to the States, she devoted the whole sum, $646,000, 
to her university. Private beneficence has also done not a 
little to supplement the gifts of the States and the United 
States. Kansas University has received a bequest of nearly 
$200,000 from a citizen of Massachusetts. The University 
of Minnesota has received a building costing $150,000 from 
a citizen of Minneapolis. It must be admitted, however, 
that for reasons which are obvious it has not been so easy 
to procure large personal gifts for the universities which 
can draw on the treasury of a Commonwealth as for those 
which are wholly dependent on private endowments. But 
there are cheering signs that the universities may hope to 
fare better in this regard in the future than they have fared 
in the past. It may be said with truth that few other 
universities have had so large resources as they in the first 
thirty or fifty years of their existence. 

II. The organization and powers of the governing board 
of the State University are determined by the constitution 



THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE WEST. 33 

of the State. The members of the board, usually styled 
regents, are in some States appointed by the Governor, in 
others elected by the people, and in yet others are State 
officers acting ex officiis as regents. The boards are smaller 
than the boards of trustees of endowed colleges, in Michi- 
gan, for instance, numbering only eight. They generally 
serve for terms of six or eight years, though in Wisconsin 
for a term of only two years. In Michigan the constitution 
makes them a branch of the State government, removable 
only by impeachment, and entirely independent of legisla- 
tive control except in the use of funds specifically appro- 
priated by the Legislature. In some States they are too 
much under legislative control. 

As no salary attaches to the office of regent, the position 
is not much sought by mere politicians. The boards meet 
with more frequency than the trustees of most endowed 
colleges. Those of Michigan, for instance, meet monthly 
or oftener. The number of members being small, each 
feels a considerable sense of responsibility and, I think, 
gives more attention to his duties than most trustees of 
colleges. So far as I have observed, they are not often 
affected in their official action by political bias. There 
seems to be a growing tendency to put alumni upon the 
boards. As the financial reports of the universities have to 
be subjected to the scrutiny of the State auditor or treasurer, 
an effective check is thus provided to malfeasance by the 
financial officers of the university. On the whole, the 
organization of the responsible governing bodies of these 
State institutions is fairly satisfactory, though in some States 
there is room for improvement. 

III. I desire now to describe with the utmost frankness 
some of the embarrassments to which they have been sub- 
jected. 

I. In the first place most of them lost through unwise or 
fraudulent management a large part of the national endow- 
ment. The lands were rented or sold at a great sacrifice 
in early days when the public domain was apparently un- 



34 THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE WEST. 

limited, and when no one appreciated how great the needs 
of a university in our day would be. Shrewd speculators 
outwitted in some cases the lawful guardians of the univer- 
sity endowment. The story is not a cheerful one to dwell 
on. The institutions in the younger States have fared 
better in this regard. 

2. The State universities, whose national endowment is 
not large enough to free them from dependence on legisla- 
tive appropriations for support, have occasionally suffered 
from inability to secure continuity in some of their work. 
When a certain kind of instruction, for example in archi- 
tecture or in medicine, had been begun under specific 
appropriations by one Legislature, it has subsequently been 
necessary to discontinue it because the next Legislature 
failed to continue the appropriation for that purpose. I 
need not say how serious such interruptions are, though, 
of course, through financial reverses they sometimes befall 
endowed colleges. The troubles of this kind are diminish- 
ing, because the life of each university is becoming more 
stable as the years go on, and the scope of the work it can 
wisely undertake is becoming more definitely recognized 
both by regents and Legislatures. 

3. The State universities have had to contend against an 
earnest opposition on religious grounds. They have had to 
meet the charge that they are " godless institutions," and 
hence unfit homes for young men and young women during 
the period of their higher education. Many students have 
been turned aside from them by this charge, which has 
been made by two different classes — first, by those who 
maintain that a university supported by the State cannot 
tolerate, much less cherish, a Christian spirit in its teachers 
and pupils, and, secondly, by those who desire to build up 
denominational colleges at the expense of the State universi- 
ties. 

There can be no doubt that the majority of the parents 
who send their children to our higher institutions of learn- 
ing would prefer that those children should find themselves 



THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE WEST. 35 

in circumstances friendly, rather than hostile, to the culti- 
vation of a genuinely religious spirit and life. And most 
of them have come to see that in the State universities the 
conditions of life are not unpropitious to the development 
of high moral and religious character. In them, as in all 
American colleges, the teachers are, as a rule, men of sincere 
Christian character, and are as free there as anywhere to 
exert a legitimate influence in building up the spiritual life 
of the students. Through the medium of voluntary asso- 
ciations, composed of teachers and students, there is abund- 
ant opportunity in every State university for the develop- 
ment of a sincere* and deep spiritual life in one's self and 
in others. There has been little or no complaint that pro- 
fessors in State universities were exerting a more positive 
Christian influence than they ought. The great body of 
people interested in higher education cherish in a more or 
less generous sense the religious ideal of character, and will 
not complain of the teachers who in a broad and unsectarian 
way influence the young to attain to that ideal. The em- 
barrassments of the State universities have come rather 
from the lack of sympathy and co-operation of religious 
people who, from a mistaken sense of duty or from misappre- 
hensions of the spirit prevailing in such institutions, have 
held themselves aloof from them. But an auspicious change 
in the attitude of this class is going on. They are founding 
religious halls in proximity to the universities, and through 
guilds and other organizations are seeking to aid in the 
cultivation of religious life among the students. 

4. I think the State universities are often more exposed 
than the endowed universities to unintelligent and mis- 
chievous criticism. This point is not due in any consider- 
able degree to partisan interference with them. The public 
schools and the State universities and agricultural colleges 
have so strong a hold upon the public esteem that no party 
and no party leader would find it profitable to make an 
attack upon them. But critics and newspapers do feel, and 
justly enough, somewhat freer to comment adversely upon 



36 THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE WEST. 

the administration of an institution sustained by the tax- 
payers than upon the conduct of one maintained by private 
beneficence. Harvard and Yale and Columbia do not, in- 
deed, altogether escape the criticisms of editors and cor- 
respondents. But where differences of opinion have arisen 
between members of the board of regents or members of the 
faculties of State universities, more vehement and passionate 
and unreasonable discussion than is common in the East 
has sometimes flooded the newspapers of the West, be- 
cause every taxpayer has a right to be informed concerning 
the conduct of the institutions which he helps sustain. This 
has occasionally wrought incidental and temporary embar- 
rassment, and has caused discomfort to faculties who were 
subjected to unjust criticisms by scribblers entirely incom- 
petent to pass judgment on imiversity problems. Still, it is 
very proper that a State university should be open to public 
criticism, and even a considerable freedom of comment has 
the incidental advantage of directing general attention to the 
institution and of awakening a certain public interest in it. 
It is not altogether unwholesome for any of us who are 
entrusted with the care of a university, whether trustees or 
professors, to be held responsible in some degree to the 
judgment of the public, which in the long run is not likely 
to be unreasonable in its demands upon us. But partisan 
meddling with the Western universities has been far less 
frequent than is generally believed in the East. 

IV. Having now with the utmost frankness set forth the 
embarrassments which State universities have encountered, 
let me endeavor to describe with moderation the services 
which they have rendered. 

I. They have enabled one or two generations of men to 
obtain a substantial collegiate or professional education 
who otherwise must have been compelled to forego this 
training, and they have furnished this supply of educated 
men at the very time when the new States were urgently in 
need of such leaders. The Western States were settled by 
men many of whom had received a collegiate education 



THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE WEST. yj 

in their native States in the East, and most of whom, 
whether college-bred or not, were fired with an intense de- 
sire to secure for their children the advantages of higher 
education. But in their pioneer life it was absolutely im- 
possible for them to send their sons east for collegiate train- 
ing or to endow colleges at home. When, therefore, Con- 
gress with singular prescience and statesmanship obeyed 
the mandate of the great Ordinance and gave public lands 
for the endowment of universities, these young States were 
enabled to offer to the settler the longed-for opportunities 
for his son to secure an education. So from the cabins of 
logs and the huts of sods the boys, clad in the simplest 
garb, flocked to the unadorned halls of the new universities. 
So there was reared in the midst of the primitive life of 
regions just emerging from the condition of a wilderness 
a generation of men who in all the hot competitions and 
grave responsibilities of American life have shown them- 
selves the peers of the most brilliant sons of the seaboard 
States and colleges. 

One advantage of supreme worth to the West, and indeed 
to the whole country, the State universities have secured, 
in furnishing higher education, both collegiate and pro- 
fessional, almost without cost to the students. The few rich 
men in that region could have sent their sons to Eastern 
colleges. But, if their sons alone for the last generation 
could have enjoyed higher training, those new States would 
have been cursed with the social condition arising from 
having a small class of rich and educated men separated by 
a great gulf from the large class of poor and uneducated 
men. As it is they have had hard problems enough, and 
still have them, in moulding the complex elements of their 
populations, drawn freshly from all parts of the world, into 
that social and political homogeneousness essential to the 
safe administration of republican institutions. How much 
graver difficulty would they encounter if the poor had been 
excluded from the opportunities for education which have 
enabled many of them to rise to leadership in the social, 



38 THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE WEST. 

political and religious life of those States in the formative 
period of their existence. The fathers did indeed build 
more wisely than they knew when they provided that as 
each Territory was born into Statehood it should have in 
its possession the germ of a university, which should grow 
with its growth and strengthen with its strength, and so 
furnish it with men equipped for all high public duties. 

2. Again, the State universities have not only by their 
early organization been able to save a generation of edu- 
cated men to the new States when those States particularly 
needed them, but they have also furnished a richer and 
more varied education than privately endowed colleges 
could have furnished before this time. It is only within 
the last few years that private beneficence has furnished an 
equipment for any college or university in the West at all 
comparable to the equipment of several State universities. 
This fact was due to no lack of generosity on the part of 
western men, but the exigencies of life in the young States 
were so pressing that large funds could not be released by 
business men for the ample endowment of great schools 
of learning. Most of the denominational colleges, worthy 
as is the work they have done with limited means, were 
compelled to confine their work within rather narrow limits. 
But the State universities were enabled at an early day to 
undertake varied scientific teaching, which is the most costly 
of all teaching, to gather pretty good libraries and to estab- 
lish schools of law, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and engi- 
neering. This breadth and variety of work have been im- 
possible until very recently for any privately endowed 
school. How valuable the provisions for these different 
kinds of instruction have been to the West I need hardly 
say. Still further, the excellence which the resources of the 
States have enabled their universities to attain in the quality 
of their instruction has stimulated and compelled all the 
other colleges and universities to bring their work up to a 
higher standard than they could otherwise have attained, 
and so has lifted the grade of education through the West. 



THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE WEST. 39 

A good illustration is afforded, if I may without presump- 
tion speak of it, in the action of the University of Michigan 
in raising the standard of medical education by leading the 
way in extending its two courses of six months each to 
two of nine months, then to three years of nine months, 
and finally to four years of nine months, with a preliminary 
examination equal to that required for admission to the 
scientific department of American colleges. The best 
schools must follow, as indeed some are following, or lose 
their most aspiring students. 

3. I ought, in justice to our ideas in the West, to say that 
we reckon among the advantages of our universities the 
fact that without exception they are and have been open 
to women. I do not propose to discuss here the question 
of co-education. But one can hardly overrate the blessings 
the State universities have conferred, not only on the women 
who have had the same training as the men, but also on the 
whole system of education in the West, by enabling the 
women, to whom so much of the teaching in western high 
schools is confided, to carry into those schools as good 
educational attainments and ideals as the men, and by de- 
livering the West almost entirely from that most worthless 
of all educational shams, the old-fashioned female seminary, 
in which the most shallow and insipid instruction was 
given within those narrow limits beyond which it was not 
deemed possible, or at any rate prudent, for the mind of a 
young woman to be carried. 

4. The State universities have wielded a most powerful 
influence for good by working in hearty co-operation with 
the public school system. This is relatively a matter of 
more consequence in the West than it would be in the East. 
A well-conceived and well-organized system of public 
schools comprising all grades, from the primary to the high 
school, was so early well established, partly on endowments 
of public lands, that outside of Ohio nearly all of the sec- 
ondary education, including the preparatory training for 
college, is given in the high schools. It is easy to see why 



40 THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE WEST. 

the universities, supported like the schools by public funds, 
should naturally and readily come into relations with the 
schools which should prove mutually beneficial. Neither 
the denominational colleges in the West nor those in the 
East have succeeded like the State universities in coming 
into close and friendly contact with the high schools and in 
reaching through them the whole system of lower schools. 
This has been accomplished by various means, perhaps by 
none so efficiently as through the system of visitation and 
inspection of the high schools by members of the university 
faculty, with a view of receiving graduates into their classes, 
as the German universities receive students from the gym- 
nasia. I do not propose to discuss that custom now. But 
whatever may be said of it, this certainly must be conceded, 
that it has furnished a great stimulus to the schools, has 
strengthened local pride in them, has improved the quality 
of instruction, has kindled in many a youth an ambition 
which he otherwise might never have felt to obtain a college 
education, has led these schools in some States in twenty 
years to push up their grade of work a full year, has kept 
the university in touch with them and has secured a real, 
where there was no formal, unity of organization in State 
systems of education from the primary school up through 
all the departments of the university. The lifting and in- 
spiring power of the university is felt down through all the 
grades of the most elementary class in the lowest schools. 
This is a public service which cannot well be overestimated, 
and which probably could never have been rendered in 
equal measure in any other organization of the higher edu- 
cation. It is of vast consequence that the teachers, from 
the women in the kindergarten up through the primary and 
secondary schools and the college and the university, should 
all feel that their work is one, and should be drawn together 
by bonds of sympathy, of mutual appreciation of each 
other's work, and of a spirit of hearty co-operation for the 
same great end. Such an alliance imparts zest and pride 
to every teacher from the lowest to the highest, and strength 
and beauty to the whole educational system of a State. 



THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE WEST. 4I 

V. And now what is to be the future of the State uni- 
versities? As their wants increase, can the States be ex- 
pected to provide for them? I cannot but be hopeful for 
their future. Like all other universities they will probably 
not have all the means they could well use, much less all 
they desire. A university which has all it wishes has 
already ceased to advance or begun to decline. If it is not 
reaching out for something better and larger than it has 
obtained, the seeds of decay are planted within it. If the 
day ever comes when my friend, your President, does not 
wish something more for this University than it has, then 
I shall believe that the University has begun to die at the 
roots, or if he will allow me to say it, that it is time for the 
President to resign. But that the States will enable their 
universities to go on in a path of improvement at a reason- 
able pace I confidently expect. They are under pledge to 
the general government, from whom they have accepted 
lands for the establishment of the universities. They have 
in most cases already a large amount of money, which they 
cannot sacrifice, invested in the plant. They cherish a pride 
in the usefulness and reputation of these institutions. 

Each State whose university has been in existence for 
some years has within its borders so many of the graduates, 
a considerable proportion of whom are persons of influence, 
that public opinion would condemn any proposition to 
abandon the principal school of learning. The tendency of 
late years has been to enlarge rather than diminish the 
appropriations for the support of universities. The States 
seem to have settled on the policy of maintaining them, with 
almost as little discussion as is evoked by the passage of 
bills for the support of the State charitable institutions. 
Like a privately endowed university they will doubtless 
have their times of financial trials and disappointment. But 
the trend of the public sentiment for the last twenty years, 
and the study of all the conditions of the life of the uni- 
versities, justify the faith that, as the Commonwealths of 
the West grow richer and more populous, they will provide 



42 THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE WEST. 

yet more liberally than they have provided in the past for 
their institutions of higher learning. It must be remem- 
bered that nearly every Western State has the territory and 
the resources of a European kingdom. Germany has a 
university for each two millions of her inhabitants. Ohio, 
Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri and Texas have each 
more than that number of inhabitants now, and other West- 
ern States will soon exceed it. Each may well have one 
large university within its borders, and all the signs indicate 
that in almost every Commonwealth the State university 
will be the great university, if there is to be but one. 

You in the East often speak with a certain admiration 
of the unparalleled material development of the West, and 
predict that by virtue of the increase of its population that 
section will control the political destinies of the country. 
But, believe me, we in the West are sincerely striving to 
make the development of our schools, from the humblest 
to the highest, keep pace with the development of our 
abundant material resources. We hope that we are not 
unmindful of the fact that intelligence and character ought 
to outweigh, and often do outweigh, mere numbers in in- 
fluence on public opinion. We know that we ought not 
to aspire to the shaping of the fortunes of the republic unless 
we can rear and place in power large-souled and broad- 
minded statesmen of whose leadership the whole nation 
may justly be proud. 

We are seeking in our way to accomplish by our great 
schools what you in the East have so well accomplished 
chiefly by other methods than ours of sustaining such 
schools. We believe that in none of its educational work 
has the West shown more originality and more wise im- 
provement of great opportunities than in the nurture of its 
universities. We have now reached a stage in our history 
where we can possibly combine your method of support 
with ours. We certainly have no scruples about accepting 
private gifts to supplement the generosity of the States. 
There are not wanting indications that we may expect them. 



THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE WEST. 43 

I have sometimes asked, also, whether as the wants of 
your worthy Eastern universities grow more pressing and 
their immeasurable blessings to their States and to the 
nation become more and more obvious, these rich Eastern 
Commonwealths will not imitate the examples of the fath- 
ers, and once more render aid to some of these great 
schools. When one sees, for instance, what this university 
in its brief life has already achieved for Baltimore and for 
Maryland, as well as for the whole land, when one con- 
siders that it has done a work which for amount and ex- 
cellence seems to the sister universities out of all propor- 
tion to the means at its command, and has had a success 
altogether unique in training men to take places in college 
faculties, when one remembers that the provision made for 
its support by its munificent founder, though it was deemed 
very large fifteen years ago, no longer ranks as such by 
the side of the incomes of some of those universities with 
which alone the Johns Hopkins University should be com- 
pared, a Western university officer, accustomed to call on 
his State for help, may be pardoned for suggesting the 
inquiry, whether this proud and flourishing State of Mary- 
land might not well do on a larger scale for this university 
what she did in her earlier years on a smaller scale for St. 
John's College and the University of Maryland, and what 
her neighbor, Virginia, has done for her famous university, 
even in the stress of poverty and war. 

But of one thing I am sure, with whatever differences of 
organization the universities of the West and the universi- 
ties of the East may attempt to discharge their high duties, 
they will cherish the most fraternal spirit toward each other 
and bid each other God speed in their great work of pro- 
moting sound learning in this nation. 

In this spirit I have come to you on this your festal day 
to bring you from the Western universities their salutations, 
their congratulations, and their best wishes for the ever- 
increasing prosperity of this renowned institution. 



A CITY UNIVERSITY 
AN ADDRESS 

BY 

HON. SETH LOW, LL. D. 

President of Columbia College 

DELIVERED AT THE NINETEENTH COMMEMORATION OF THE 
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, FEBRUARY 22, 1895 



It is the glory of Baltimore that here was illustrated for 
the first time, in a new way, the availability of an American 
city to be the home of a university. It is the glory of this 
university that, being of a type new to American experience, 
its methods and its ideals have been largely adopted by 
both the older and the new institutions of the higher learn- 
ing in the United States. I do not forget that my own 
Alma Mater, Columbia College, had been at work in New 
York for more than a century before the Johns Hopkins 
was founded, nor that she wore the aspect of a university 
in that she had surrounded herself even then with a series 
of professional schools that already had a national reputa- 
tion. Neither do I overlook the fact that, as early as 1857, 
the Trustees of Columbia College endeavored to develop in 
New York instruction of a university grade and spirit in 
the subjects usually included in the faculty of philosophy — 
in those subjects, in a word, which the Johns Hopkins has 
made its own. But in 1857 neither time nor place were 
friendly and the project failed of success. Naturally, I am 
not speaking now of college work, for Columbia's contri- 
butions to the country on that side are neither few nor 
small. When, therefore, President Oilman was called to 



46 A CITY UNIVERSITY. 

the duty of organizing the Johns Hopkins University, the 
man and the opportunity for a university of a new t>*pe met 
in America for the first time. The time at last was ripe. 
and the sagacious administrator was at hand to summon 
its possibiUties into being. I trust that I shall not oftend 
the sensibilities of the people of Baltimore if I say that. 
before the Johns Hopkins University \\'as established, tlie 
city had no especial reputation as an educational centre. 
There must, indeed, have been here, in at least one mind, 
a clear apprehension of the great \-alue to a community of 
an institution of the higher learning, or tlie foundation pro- 
%*ided by Johns Hopkins would not have been set up. To- 
day your city has both a national and an international repu- 
tation as the seat of this university. I mar\*el at the achieve- 
ment of less than twenty years. If any argument were 
needed to demonstrate tlie fitness of a city to be the home 
of a university, your experience would supply it. I wonder 
if tlie people of Baltimore are alive to the fame that is 
theirs by reason of the work that the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity has done in their midst. The cit\- ought to cherish 
the university as the apple of its eye, Xo wealthy Balti- 
morean should die \\-ithout adding to its resources. The 
name, like those of John Harvard and of Eli Yale, in time 
\s-ill become impersonal, and yours will be the pride and 
the enjo>Tnejit of its gro^^'ing repute. 

If I were to tr}- to point out what this Baltimore uni- 
versity has done for the higher education in the United 
States. I should emphasize, first of all, the \-alue of its de- 
monstration that a university does not consist of great 
buildings, nor of an extensive campus, nor of any of the 
accessories which we have been in the habit of associating 
in these later years with our historic colleges. The uni- 
versity consists of its teachers, and of the libraries, the 
museums, the collections, the apparatus that is necessan»- 
for its work. Only this, and you may have a universit>". 
This is not to say that a university" ought not to be nobly 
housed. If tliis were so. I should not be stri\-ine at this 



A CITY UNIVERSITY. 47 

moment to move the university of Columbia College to a 
new site, the cost of which for land alone is $2,000,000. 
When the conditions favor, a city cannot give to its uni- 
versity too noble a home. You may judge a city, indeed, 
as to the estimate it puts upon the value of the higher learn- 
ing, by the home it provides for its university, when the 
university has brought to the city fame and the world's 
regard. But, if President Oilman had used up his endow- 
ment in the construction of great buildings, men might, 
indeed, have said, *' behold, what great buildings are here," 
but they would not have said, as they now say, " behold, 
what a university is here." I have ventured to adapt the 
spirit of this illustration to my own work in New York. 
I have urged the Trustees to put their own resources into 
education, in the confidence that, when Columbia was seen 
to be of increasing service to the city, the generous people 
of New York would see to it that we should not go without 
buildings. This policy, and this alone, in my judgment, 
has made possible our recent development and has made 
practicable our project of removal to the new site. It has 
brought to Columbia College, in one way and another, 
about $5,000,000 in five years. 

This statement, in turn, helps to illustrate what we are 
talking about when we speak of a city university. For the 
work of an American college, in the historic sense, no such 
vast endowments are necessary. It is true that the use of 
the elective system and the teaching of natural science in 
our colleges by laboratory methods call for larger endow- 
ments than were formerly sufficient, but the vast sums 
needed by a university are not needed by a college even 
now. The aim of the college is to give a liberal education. 
It opens up vistas in many directions into wide domains of 
knowledge, but it does not undertake to lead the student far 
along any one path. It deals with students in considerable 
groups, and withal, with students for the most part from 
sixteen to twenty years of age. The university, on the 
other hand, deals with students, for the most part, who are 



48 A CITY UNIVERSITY. 

Upwards of twenty years of age. Ideally, these students 
have already had the liberal education which the college 
aims to supply. They are ready, therefore, to enter upon 
advanced work, and what they demand of the university is 
the opportunity to carry their studies in any direction which 
is of interest to the human mind to the utmost limit of that 
which is already known. They demand more than this. 
They wish to be taught how to make researches on their 
own account, how to use the books, the methods and the 
apparatus which make a man competent to add to the sum 
of human knowledge by contributions of his own. It is 
true that not every student who studies with that hope has 
the natural gifts to enable him to become an original inves- 
tigator. On the other hand, students who pursue their 
studies by that method, at the very least become thoroughly 
acquainted with their subject as they cannot become ac- 
quainted with it in any other way. A necessary conse- 
quence of this aim of the university is to compel the 
university to deal with its students to a much greater ex- 
tent as individuals. Each man must be guided in his read- 
ing and his experimental work as nearly as possible with 
the same care that would be bestowed upon him if the 
university had only a single student. It is an axiom in 
educational work that the higher the grade of such work, 
the greater the cost per capita. It costs less per capita to 
maintain the primary schools than the grammar schools, 
less per capita to maintain the grammar schools than the 
high schools, less per capita to maintain the high schools 
than the colleges, and very much less per capita to main- 
tain the colleges than the universities. At every stage the 
causes that produce the increase of expense are the same, 
and they work with increasing force the higher one pro- 
ceeds in the scale. Broadly stated, they are, as has already 
been indicated, that the range of studies open to the student 
body increases as the student advances on his path, and 
that the demands of the student upon the teacher call con- 
stantly for a higher grade of work and for more individual 



A CITY UNIVERSITY. 49 

work. In addition to these two causes, there is, as one 
approaches the university, an increasing necessity for large 
outlay for apparatus. It may easily cost as much to carry 
on a single research in physics that will be conducted by 
one or two men as to provide laboratory instruction in 
physics for a large school of boys. A college needs a good 
reference library and a collection of standard books as 
large as may be readily had. It does not need a library for 
historical research nor for philological study, nor in gen- 
eral the exhaustive collections of books that become im- 
mediately important in any subject the moment even a 
single student undertakes to pursue his topic with the 
thoroughness of a trained investigator. How much it can 
cost to provide such opportunities in even a single line of 
study may be easily understood. When it is recalled that 
the duty of a university is to afford such opportunities 
around the whole circle of human knowledge, the mind is 
prepared to appreciate how very costly such an enterprise 
must be. 

Thus far I have been dealing simply with the material 
side of the question. It goes without saying that a great 
investigator cannot be trained by things alone. He must 
come into contact with the spirit of research embodied in 
a living man. Such men, for the most part, are the ablest 
men to be found among the ranks of teachers. Ordinarily, 
they can command the highest salaries. In these days, a 
larger number of men are needed to cover thoroughly any 
one of the great fields of knowledge than was the case a 
generation ago. The tendencies that have shown them- 
selves in the industrial world in the minute division of labor, 
in the scholarly world have revealed themselves no less 
strikingly in the direction of specialization. No one man, 
therefore, is any longer an authority on the whole of a great 
subject. For example, it is rare to find a man who is at the 
same time an acknowledged authority on the philology and 
on the literature of any one of the great languages. In the 
days when philology was less developed, it was easy for a 



50 A CITY UNIVERSITY. 

man to deal with the Hterature of a language and also satis- 
factorily enough with the language itself. In our day it is 
not so, and in my observation, at least, the characteristics 
of mind which lead a man to take deep interest in philolog- 
ical questions are distinctly unfriendly to what may be called 
the natural and spontaneous enjoyment of the literary pro- 
ductions of the languages, such as any man who is able 
to read is capable of responding to. This, however, is only 
by way of illustration. The fact is undisputed that a uni- 
versity, in order to respond to the reasonable demands of 
advanced students in these times, must ordinarily provide 
not one man only, but several men, in order to secure ade- 
quate treatment of all sides of any great department of 
knowledge. No such comprehensive attitude towards lit- 
erature or science or philosophy is expected of a college. 
On the other hand, the university in which such privileges 
cannot be had is still short of the ideal. 

This leads me to say a few words in further explanation 
of my conception of a university, for it must be admitted 
that in our American usage of the word, it does not stand 
for anything capable as yet of explicit definition. This is 
the less remarkable because it means a different thing in 
England from what it means in France, and a different 
thing in France from what it means in Germany and in 
the other countries of Europe that have adopted the Ger- 
man conception and model. I have said enough already 
to make it clear that the university, in the sense in which 
I have been speaking of it, is a comparatively new thing in 
the United States. It is natural, therefore, that even among 
educators, the word should have an uncertain significance, 
until with the lapse of time a common usage has been de- 
veloped. It is well understood that the American college 
was, in its origin, the child of the English college. The 
different conditions to which it has been exposed have 
modified the American college so that it is no longer exactly 
like its prototype. Nevertheless, in aim and in essence it 
is the same thing, a school for liberal education. The Eng- 



A CITY UNIVERSITY. 51 

lish university is a collection of English colleges. Its edu- 
cational relation to the colleges is not greatly felt on the 
side of instruction. There are indeed a few university lec- 
turers whom members of the colleges may listen to if they 
desire, but, for the most part, the instruction is given in the 
colleges and very largely by individual tutors. The uni- 
versity conducts the examinations and grants the degree, 
and thus, as it were, establishes the educational standard 
and places upon those who obtain the degree the impri- 
matur of the university. The educational aim, however, is 
not changed because the degrees are given by the university 
rather than by the separate college. This is the English 
conception of a university. It is said, and with some rea- 
son, I think, that the present educational system of France, 
which dates from the first empire, was modeled after that 
which was ideally outlined in New York by the law estab- 
lishing a University of the State of New York. This law 
was largely the product of the constructive genius of Alex- 
ander Hamilton. I do not know that the accuracy of this 
inference is susceptible of proof. It is said, nevertheless, 
that the law establishing the University of France, and 
declaring its relations to the educational system in France, 
is so like the law framed by Hamilton and his colleagues 
that it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the author 
of the French law was at least familiar with the New York 
law. Only, in France, the law has been carried into active 
and efficient operation with all the authority of government 
behind it. In the State of New York it has remained prac- 
tically a dead-letter. By this scheme all the educational 
institutions in the country are made a part of the University 
of France, just as in the State of New York it is theoretic- 
ally the case that all the institutions of the higher learning 
are made a part of the University of the State of New York. 
But in New York the theory has not been felt in practice 
and each institution has worked out its own salvation as 
best it might. This, then, is the French conception of a 
university. Thus it is clear that the university about which 



52 A CITY UNIVERSITY. 

I have been talking is neither the EngHsh conception of a 
university, nor the French, even though the French con- 
ception exists in counterpart by statute in the laws of the 
State of New York. The result both of the English and 
of the French system has been to lead to the development 
of literature and scientific research chiefly outside of the 
universities. In Germany, on the other hand, we find a 
university system developed which has brought the student 
into close personal contact with the profoundest scholars 
of the country and the leaders of research in all directions 
of study. Thus the future teachers of Germany, and the 
future practitioners in all the learned professions as well, 
get their instruction and their preparation for their future 
work in an atmosphere as friendly as possible to the most 
thorough mastery of their own specialty and as friendly as 
possible to the development of original thinking and work 
upon their own part. This, I conceive, is the result that 
ought to be aimed at in the development of the American 
university. Naturally, the American university will not be 
exactly like the German university in all its details. It will 
have no such relation to the government, on the one hand, 
nor any such relation to the school system of the country, 
on the other. It will relate itself to the American college, 
which is an institution entirely American in its character- 
istics and as necessary and useful to-day as it ever has been 
in the long history of the country. Nevertheless, the aim 
which the German university has set before itself and which 
it has very largely realized under the conditions natural to 
German life, is the aim, in my judgment, which the Amer- 
ican university also should set before itself and which it 
must realize under the conditions natural to American life, 
because, after all has been said, the world is ruled by its 
thinkers, and civilization is carried forward by the patient 
investigators of natural laws; the lives of men are largely 
shaped by the teachings of experience as revealed by his- 
torical study; and the literature of men is enriched by every 
addition to our knowledge of the literature and language of 



A CITY UNIVERSITY. 53 

the past. Nature's craftsmen in all these directions will 
produce results according to their gifts outside of a uni- 
versity if they get no opportunity within it. But the history 
of Germany clearly shows that the opportunity to serve 
mankind along such lines is much enlarged, if to train such 
men is the chosen aim of the university; in part, because in 
that case, the university affords the material apparatus by 
the aid of which the natural thinker or investigator can best 
do his work, and, most of all, because in a university so 
constituted, the atmosphere of the place and the spirit of 
the men who work there are friendly to such labors. 

I am ready now to point out what I conceive to be the 
second great service which the Johns Hopkins University 
has done for the higher education in the United States. 
The American college has not itself made great scholars, for 
that was not its aim. It has, however, produced sound 
scholarship up to a certain point, and it has awakened in 
many a desire for more learning than the college itself 
could satisfy. Such students, in large numbers, during the 
last half-century have gone to Europe to complete their 
studies. It is noticeable that they have gone in a far 
larger stream to Germany than either to England or ,to 
France. This circumstance demonstrates, I think, that it 
is in Germany that the need is best met which Americans 
feel who desire to be thorough scholars and to become 
masters of their subject. The Johns Hopkins University 
set itself to demonstrate that such opportunities could be 
given in the United States by an institution deliberately 
adopting that aim and conducting its work with reference 
thereto. The older American colleges, like Harvard and 
Columbia, were in no way blind to the necessity of provid- 
ing such opportunities. As I have already intimated, as 
early as 1857 the Trustees of Columbia College endeavored 
to make a movement in that direction. They were ahead 
of the times, however, at that date, and furthermore, they 
were embarrassed by the difficulty of adding to an educa- 
tional establishment that had grown up with other aims a 



54 A CITY UNIVERSITY. 

new something that should represent this different ideal. 
It is the glory of the Johns Hopkins University, as I con- 
ceive, that you perceived not only that the new departure 
was timely, but also that a new institution was better able 
to make it than any of the older ones. The work of the 
Johns Hopkins University has been so successful that, by 
slow degrees and after much effort, several of the older 
foundations, and among them Columbia, are working now 
with the same aim as distinctly and as intelligently as your- 
selves. 

The problem at such a university as Columbia is a very 
different one from yours in Baltimore. In the conception 
of a German university, all knowledge is comprehended in 
four faculties — the faculty of theology, the faculty of med- 
icine, the faculty of law and the faculty of philosophy. It 
is clear at a glance that the first three faculties are faculties 
that train men for the learned professions. The scope of 
each one is roughly indicated by its name. The faculty of 
philosophy includes all other knowledge — philosophical, 
linguistic, scientific, historical, and the like. The Johns 
Hopkins University, having its opportunity to choose, has 
established here, in the first instance, a faculty of philos- 
ophy. It did not pretend to cover the whole of the field 
covered by the faculty of philosophy in such a university, 
for instance, as that of Berlin. It did aim to cover well 
whatever portion of the field it entered into. That has 
been its wisdom and the chief reason, I think, of its ac- 
knowledged success. Very recently it has begun to offer 
instruction on the scientific side of medicine in connection 
with the Johns Hopkins Hospital, which is now in opera- 
tion. You will perceive that behind the university's in- 
struction in medicine there is the same purpose of develop- 
ing a scientifically trained student, so that the practitioner 
shall be not merely a good practitioner, but a thoroughly 
trained student in his profession. Having the opportunity 
to start afresh, the Johns Hopkins University has wisely, 
I think, placed its medical school upon a university basis 



A CITY UNIVERSITY. 55 

by demanding a college education as a pre-requisite for ad- 
mission. This is not to say that a good doctor cannot be 
made without a college education, but it is to say that the 
duty of the university to the medical profession is not fully 
performed until it stands firmly, first of all, for a broadly 
developed man, and then for a broadly developed man 
scientifically trained in all matters pertaining to his pro- 
fession. It is clear that, if the Johns Hopkins University 
will adhere to this wise policy, it will one day develop a 
university as nearly complete as the means at its command 
will permit and as American conditions will sustain. 

I do not know to what extent the theological faculty 
will become a part of our American universities. More 
and more I expect to see the theological schools affiliated 
to the universities by some such system as prevails, for in- 
stance, at Columbia. But I do not yet foresee the time 
when theology can be studied in this country with the same 
spirit of free inquiry as American public sentiment sup- 
ports in relation to medicine, law and general knowledge. 
At Columbia, Dr. Hastings, the President of the Union 
Theological Seminary, sits in our University Council, with- 
out a vote, but with the privilege of the floor, by virtue of 
an arrangement under which the educational opportunities 
of both institutions, where they touch each other, are made 
available for a single fee to the students of each. Arrange- 
ments somewhat similar in character, though less complete, 
exist between Columbia College and the General Theo- 
logical Seminary (Episcopal) and the Jewish Theological 
Seminary as well. By such an arrangement as exists with 
the Union Theological Seminary, the university obtains the 
advantage of the theological point of view in shaping its 
educational policy; it contributes to the scholarly equip- 
ment of many students of theology, and obtains for its 
own students the privilege of attending, as electives, such 
courses in the theological seminary as may appeal to them. 
Both libraries, also, are open to the students of each insti- 
tution on the same terms. In the meanwhile, the university 



56 A CITY UNIVERSITY. 

escapes all the controversies which at one time or another 
are apt to show themselves in connection with theological 
education. The plan also is adaptable at large. The same 
university can, if it wishes, enter into the same arrangements 
with more than one seminary. 

At Columbia the historic American college had sur- 
rounded itself with professional schools in medicine, law 
and applied science before the new ideal peculiar to the 
university, as I have outlined it, became a recognized part 
of its polity. Our undertaking, therefore, is not simply to 
create, but also to transform. We do not desire to destroy 
the historic college which has contributed so many famous 
names to American history and whose endowments are the 
basis of all the university development that Columbia can 
command. We do, however, desire to relate the college to 
the university in such a way as to benefit the college work 
proper and the university work which is to follow it, 
whether under the faculty of philosophy or under any of 
the professional faculties. We do desire further to lift, as 
we can, the standard of instruction in the professional 
schools, until at last they shall all be upon a university 
plane. For such a problem as this, time is as evidently 
necessary as in the working out of your own problem, and 
money, also, in untold sums, is essential before a satisfactory 
result can be reached. 

That is one reason why I think that both the Johns Hop- 
kins and Columbia are fortunate in being located in cities. 
Men who are able to give freely for education, as a rule, 
are much more likely to give with an open hand to an 
institution that they see and an institution which reflects 
credit, or even glory, upon the city in which they live, than 
they are to give to educational institutions at a distance, of 
which they know little except by the hearing of the ear. 
So far as educational benefactions come from men who are 
themselves college-bred men, their gifts are not unlikely to 
go to their Alma Mater; but it is an interesting circum- 
stance that men v/ho have not themselves enjoyed the 



A CITY UNIVERSITY. 57 

privilege of education are at least as likely as others to 
establish great educational foundations. Such men, more 
and more, I believe, will give to the institutions in the cities 
that have this new aim, and to the university of their own 
city in particular. I may be reminded that a citizen of 
New York has been the largest contributor to the Uni- 
versity of Chicago. This is true, but, so far as it traverses 
my argument, it may be safely said to be an exceptional 
case. In the meanwhile, these splendid gifts are developing 
a university on the right lines in the great inland city of the 
Union. Already that city has met the gifts from outside, 
large as they have been, dollar for dollar within the city, 
and one need not be a prophet nor the son of a prophet to 
be confident that, among the universities of the country 
dependent upon private foundations, none are more sure of 
support from the wealth of the city about it than the Uni- 
versity of Chicago. I like to think that the same thing is 
true of Columbia College. It stands in the midst of the 
greatest accumulation of wealth to be found in the country, 
and this wealth is largely in the hands of generous givers. 
The university has only to deserve support at the hands of 
the city in order to receive it. The same thing ought to be 
true pro tanto of the Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore 
is not so large or so wealthy a city as either New York or 
Chicago, but nevertheless it is a historic city, an important 
city, and a wealthy city. Already the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity has shown what can be accomplished with the gift 
of a single citizen of Baltimore. When the city of Balti- 
more takes this university to itself and makes its renown a 
matter of civic pride, then the Johns Hopkins University, 
like these others, can expand its work to the full measure 
of the opportunity afforded to it by the city. 

But cities contribute to universities factors of the utmost 
value other than direct gifts. I doubt a great deal, for ex- 
ample, whether the Johns Hopkins University could have 
made the name it has if the Peabody Library had not been 
at its service during all these years. The great libraries to 



58 A CITY UNIVERSITY. 

be found in cities, accessible to the competent student, are 
important contributions to the successful work of a uni- 
versity. Museums of all kinds may be made to contribute 
to its efficiency. In New York, for example, Columbia 
gives courses of public lectures on art every winter at the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, using, as far as possible, the 
objects to be found in the Museum by way of illustration. 
At the American Museum of Natural History Columbia 
gives public lectures every winter on scientific subjects. 
Both of these institutions in return place their entire col- 
lections at the service of professors and competent students 
of Columbia for investigation and research. Columbia thus 
is able to avail itself of artistic and scientific collections that 
could not be acquired directly for the university without an 
outlay of many millions of dollars. In the meanwhile, by 
this relation to the Museums, Columbia adds to the public 
collections both a greater popular value and a greater scien- 
tific value. Its public lectures enable the people to under- 
stand and appreciate the collections in the Museums better 
than they otherwise could, while its use of the collections 
for investigation and research adds to their scientific value. 
Columbia College has similar relations with the Cooper 
Union, maintaining there every winter a series of lectures 
open to the public. These lectures are delivered in courses 
and are intended for instruction rather than for amusement. 
The Cooper Union, from the nature of the case, is unable to 
give anything in return except that it gives the room with- 
out charge. But Columbia believes that it is discharging 
a legitimate part of the work of an American university 
when it brings to the public the opportunity of hearing 
competent people on scientific, historical, economic and 
literary subjects. It is, if you please, simply the old Lyceum 
lecture delivered in courses; but it is also more than that, 
for it makes the people of the city of New York appreciate 
that the university is of consequence to them as well as to 
the comparatively few who are enrolled among the ranks 
of its students. The opportunities in every city for such 



A CITY UNIVERSITY. 59 

alliances between the university and other institutions of a 
pubHc character in the city are always numerous, and, in 
some cities, they are almost limitless. I believe it to be, 
from every point of view, sound policy for the university to 
welcome these alliances rather than to hold aloof. The 
American problem is not the German problem. The Ger- 
man universities are able to pursue their aim with the 
authority of the State behind them. Further than this, the 
learned professions and the profession of teaching are open 
only to graduates of the university. In the United States, 
the universities that are the most highly developed do not 
have the authority of the State behind them, neither do they 
hold exclusive command of the portals that open into the 
profession of the teacher or into any of the so-called learned 
professions. While, therefore, the American university 
should set before itself, as I think, the same aim which has 
made the German university so powerful an instrument for 
the service of humanity, the American university must nev- 
ertheless realize this aim under conditions that are very 
different. Our endeavor must be to offer opportunities for 
costly research, which, from the nature of the case, can be 
availed of directly by only a few students out of a vast 
population, and this we must do in the midst of a demo- 
cratic community. A democratic community naturally be- 
lieves in education, and to that extent our environment is 
favorable, but a dem.ocratic community is tempted to draw 
the line in education at the point where the masses are seen 
to profit by it. Therefore I am of the opinion that if our 
universities expect permanently to maintain the sympathy 
of the people in the developments upon which they have 
recently entered, they must, for their part, demonstrate to 
the people that this sort of study by the few is, without 
doubt, of the utmost service to the multitude. Such a 
faculty of philosophy as you have established in Baltimore 
becomes the natural school for teachers in the colleges and 
the high schools of the country. Even in Germany, they 
speak of the faculty of philosophy as the professional school 



60 A CITY UNIVERSITY. 

for teachers. It is remarkable to what an extent the Johns 
Hopkins University has already fulfilled this function. This 
sort of service, I am sure, the people of the United States 
are able to understand; but it will also be wise for the uni- 
versities, I am confident, to enter into as close practical 
relations with the life of the cities in which they may be 
located as the circumstances of each case permit. When 
I dream of Columbia and its possibilities, I always think 
of a university not only great enough to influence the 
life of New York, but of a university able to influence 
the life of New York because it is itself a part of it, and 
therefore able to understand it and to minister to it. 
Time would fail me were I to attempt to point out the 
many lines upon which a city university can come into 
helpful contact with the life of the city. I am persuaded 
that each university should study its own problem. It is 
no longer possible, if it ever was, for any one university to 
be foremost around the whole circle of human knowledge. 
The same university will excel at different times in different 
departments, but if a university strives to absorb that which 
is characteristic in the life of the city in which it does its 
work, I am persuaded that every city university will have a 
flavor of its own that will draw to it persistently the men 
who want that thing. For instance. New York is the gate- 
way of the Union. There we see illustrated, among other 
things, in ways that are unique, the problems that arise from 
the vast immigration into this country. Columbia College 
has established a chair of sociology, in part to study the 
problem in the large, but also in part to read and translate 
to the people of the United States the book which the city 
of New York spreads out before our eyes. Similarly, 
Chicago is the great railroad centre of the United States. 
If I were shaping the destinies of the University of Chicago, 
I should strive night and day to acquaint the people of the 
United States with the terms of that problem, in the con- 
fident hope that some day there should come forth from 
the University of Chicago a man who would be of immense 



A CITY UNIVERSITY. 6l 

service to the country in connection with this question. 
Here in Baltimore you are face to face, as no other city uni- 
versity in the United States is or is Ukely to be, with the 
race problem. If we are not to look to the Johns Hopkins 
University for light and guidance upon that problem, to 
what university in the country shall we look? If we can- 
not look to the universities of the country for light upon 
these great problems, are not the universities of the country 
failing to perform their part in enabling the people of the 
United States to deal intelligently with the great questions 
of our day? 

In other words, I plead for a recognition on the part of 
•the university of the importance of current life. I would 
not detract by a syllable from the value to the country of 
research in science, or in history, or in political economy, 
in medicine, in law, in theology, in literature, or in anything 
else, but I do believe that if the American universities wish 
to enjoy the opportunity permanently to carry on such re- 
searches as these, they must illustrate to the people at all 
times the value of such researches by making them tributary 
to the advancement of the best civilization of the day. I do 
not mean to imply that the university must itself apply the 
law which the university discovers. That is the business, if 
you please, of the statesman, the inventor and the practical 
man. But the university must set itself to discover the 
truth if it can, and to publish it, upon the great questions 
of current importance in the life of the country and of man- 
kind, not less earnestly, not less intelligently, and not less 
thoroughly, than it applies itself to the study of questions of 
other sorts. Therefore I believe, again, in a city university 
because it is in the midst of the activities of city life. The 
tendencies of our times are to crowd the population into 
cities more and more. The mere crowding of people to- 
gether creates problems that become more and more diffi- 
cult to handle, by reason of their magnitude; but the in- 
gathering of people in the cities, if it makes problems, also 
develops the forces with which to handle the problems. 



62 A CITY UNIVERSITY. 

The strongest men in every department of life turn to the 
cities, in our day, as naturally as the river flows to the 
ocean. There is no exception to this law, in my judgment, 
in the domain of education. Special circumstances may 
keep special men in small places; but the law is, I have no 
doubt, that the city universities can command their pick 
of the men who are to teach, with an increasing certainty 
as compared with institutions not located in the city. If a 
university is made great by its men, this advantage which 
pertains to the city university would be decisive in our day. 
There is no solitude like that of a crowd, and it is certain 
that the man who is determined to have it can enjoy as 
great opportunity for reflection in the city as in the country. 
The average man may not find it in the city, but the uni- 
versity is not made great by average men. La Grange and 
La Place carried on their immortal investigations into the 
problems of celestial mechanics in Paris during the Reign 
of Terror and the troublous years that immediately preceded 
and followed it. On the other hand, the atmosphere of the 
city is vital with energy, so that a man in any department 
of life is kept constantly at his best by contact with his 
fellows. The influences that proceed out from a city are 
felt far and wide. Cities are the natural reservoirs of power, 
as the mountain chains are the natural water-sheds of a 
country. A university located in a city, therefore, occupies 
the position from which its influence can proceed farthest 
and with the least resistance. The fame of it is carried on 
the four winds as a part of the reputation of the city itself. 

It seems to me a happy practice, this habit of yours in 
Baltimore, to identify Washington's Birthday with a con- 
sideration of some of the large interests that concern a uni- 
versity. It reminds us Americans of the interest that 
Washington himself took in the foundation of a national 
university that should be worthy of the American name. 
It is inspiring to realize how clearly the fathers of the Re- 
public appreciated, not only the familiar truth that the 
foundations of a free state must be imbedded deep in popu- 
lar intelligence, but also the other truth, equally indisput- 



A CITY UNIVERSITY. 63 

able, but far less familiar, that popular intelligence cannot 
be maintained at a high level by any system of schools, 
public or private, which is not continually supplied with 
new power and fresh inspiration from those ancient springs 
of learning and investigation, the universities. It is well 
understood, as I have said, not only that the university is 
different in type in different countries, but also that within 
the same country it has been marked by different charac- 
teristics at different periods. Nevertheless, whatever may 
be its type in any country, or whatever may have been its 
predominant characteristics at any time, the university has 
always and everywhere been a school for the perpetuation 
of the accumulated knowledge of the race and for develop- 
ment of its highest scholarship according to the conceptions 
of the time. The singular thing is, that the men who 
founded this Republic in the midst of conditions so new, and 
where everything was so completely undeveloped, should 
have discerned with such unfailing sagacity the importance 
to the country of the development here of institutions of 
the highest learning. 

Every decade since the formation of the government has 
added to the importance of cities in their relation to the des- 
tinies of the Republic. I count those Americans happy, 
therefore, who, during their students days at the university, 
become familiar with the atmosphere and life of a city. 
They are likely always to be able to serve their country 
better in later life, because they know something about one 
of these busy centres of human industry and activity. And 
I count it a circumstance for profound and patriotic grati- 
tude that, in these closing years of the century, great uni- 
versities are being developed here and there in our Amer- 
ican cities, within which to train the natural leaders of the 
best and most disinterested thought of the times. Happy 
is the democracy whose broad door of opportunity opens 
to its humblest member, through the public school and the 
university, an undisputed right of way to the highest emi- 
nence of human knowledge and the widest domains of 
human thought. 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF 
HIGHER EDUCATION 

AN ADDRESS 

BY 

HERBERT B. ADAMS, Ph. D. 

Professor of History in the Johns Hopkins University 

DELIVERED ON COMMEMORATION DAY OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS 
UNIVERSITY, FEBRUARY 22, 1889.1 REPRINTED, MARCH, 1898 



I. 

The choice of the twenty-second of February for the 
Founder's Day of the Johns Hopkins University will always 
be recognized as singularly appropriate. Historic associa- 
tions, at once local and national, determined the choice. 

A local institution, with a national character, was planted 

'This address, first published in the University Circulars, March, 
1889, was the first public appeal for State aid to the University, 
and is here republished because its general spirit is in accord 
with similar appeals more recently made on Commemoration 
days. The historic argument, by comparison, is even stronger 
to-day than it was ten 3^ears ago. St, George L, Sioussat, a Mary- 
land student, has, in foot-notes, revised some of the more im- 
portant statistical statements and brought them up to date. Com- 
pare also Mr. Sioussat's supplement to President Adams' address 
on " State Aid to Education," p. 15. To oppose the principle 
of State aid to a non-sectarian university is to oppose the whole 
current of American educational history and the enlightened spirit 
of Thomas Jefferson, who convinced Virginians more than seventy 
years ago that a State should develop its intellectual as well as 
its physical resources. What constitutes the true glory of a State, 
coal mines and tobacco, or statesmen like Washington and Jeffer- 
son? Is genius found oftenest in high places or among sons 
of the people? 



66 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

in Baltimore by our President and Board of Trustees in the 
centennial year of the American Republic. Assembled 
here under the very shadow of Washington's monument, at 
a time when the whole country is preparing to celebrate the 
inauguration of the first and of the twenty-third President 
of these United States, we cannot but rejoice that the first 
President of our Baltimore university was inaugurated on 
the birthday of the Father of our Country. 

On this national holiday, when the general government 
is approaching its hundredth year, on this happy anniver- 
sary when our fair Acadcmia is just entering her teens, — 

" How tall among her sisters, and how fair; 
How grave beyond her youth, yet debonair 
As dawn," ^ 

it is fitting that loyal Hopkinsians should recognize their 
double debt of gratitude, on the one hand, to our generous 
local founder; and, on the other, to George Washington, 
Father of the National Idea in University Education. 

It is a fact not generally known that the Father of his 
Country, before he became President of the United States, 
was the president of a Virginia college. Indeed, Washing- 
ton would never have had a fair chance in public life if, as a 
young man of seventeen, he had not passed a satisfactory 
examination in surveying before the faculty of William and 
Mary College. Here, for merit, he was appointed to his 
first civic office as a county surveyor. This office gave him 
a thorough acquaintance with the western frontier of Vir- 
ginia, and prepared the way for his subsequent successes in 
military and civil life. When Washington was chosen to 
the office of chancellor of William and Alary College, suc- 
ceeding the Bishop of London in that educational honor, 
he assured the Board of Trustees of his firm confidence *' in 
their strenuous efforts for placing the system of education 
on such a basis as will render it the most beneficial to the 
State and the republic of letters, as well as to the more ex- 

^ From Sidney Lanier's Ode to the Johns Hopkins University, 
read by the author in Hopkins Hall, February 23, 1880. 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 6/ 

tensive interests of humanity and religion." Washington 
was always the friend of William and Mary College, his 
alma mater. Without forgetting local institutions in Vir- 
ginia, he advanced during his eight years' presidency of the 
United States to what may be called the National Idea in 
University Education. From that idea Baltimore to-day 
can derive encouragement and inspiration. 

Washington's grand thought of a National University, 
based upon individual endowment, may be found in many 
of his writings, but the clearest and strongest statement 
occurs in his last will and testament. There he employed 
the following significant language: " It has been my ardent 
wish to see a plan devised on a liberal scale, which would 
have a tendency to spread systematic ideas through all parts 
of this rising empire, thereby to do away local attachments 
and State prejudices, as far as the nature of things would, 
or indeed ought to admit, from our national councils. 
Looking anxiously forward to the accomplishment of so 
desirable an object as this is, in my estimation, my mind 
has not been able to contemplate any plan more likely to 
effect the measure than the establishment of a University in 
a central part of the United States, to which the youth of 
fortune and talents from all parts thereof may be sent for 
the completion of their education, in all branches of polite 
literature, in arts and sciences, in acquiring knowledge in 
the principles of politics and good government, and, as a 
matter of infinite importance in my judgmicnt, by associat- 
ing with each other and forming friendships in juvenile 
years, be enabled to free themselves in a proper degree from 
those local prejudices and habitual jealousies which have 
just been mentioned, and which, when carried to excess, 
are never-failing sources of disquietude to the public mind, 
and pregnant of mischievous consequences to this country. 
Under these impressions, so fully dilated, I give and be- 
queath, in perpetuity, the fifty shares which I hold in the 
Potomac Company, . . . towards the endowment of a uni- 
versity, to be estabHshed within the limits of the District of 



68 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

Columbia, under the auspices of the general government, 
if that government should incline to extend a fostering hand 
towards it." 

Here was the individual foundation of a National Uni- 
versity. Here was the first suggestion of that noble line 
of public policy subsequently adopted in 1846 by our gen- 
eral government in relation to the Smithsonian Institution. 
The will of James Smithson, of England, made in 1826, 
was '' to found at Washington, under the name of the Smith- 
sonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and 
diffusion of knowledge among men." A simpler educa- 
tional bequest, with such far-reaching results, was never 
before made. Whether James Smithson was influenced to 
this foundation by the example of Washington is a curious 
problem. Smithson's original bequest, amounting to some- 
thing over $500,000, was accepted by Congress for the pur- 
pose designated, and was placed in the treasury of the 
United States, where by good administration and small 
additional legacies (in two cases from other individuals) the 
sum has increased to over $700,000. Besides this, the 
Smithsonian Institution now has a library equal in value to 
the original endowment, and acquired by the simple process 
of government exchanges; and it owns buildings equal in 
value to more than half the original endowment. During 
the past year, as shown by the Secretary's report, the insti- 
tution was " charged by Congress with the care and dis- 
bursement of sundry appropriations,"^ amounting to $220,- 
000. The National Museum is under the direction of the 
Secretary of the Smithsonian, and the government appro- 
priations to that museum, since its foundation, aggregate 
nearly two million dollars. The existence and ever-increas- 
ing prosperity of the Smithsonian Institution are standing 
proofs that private foundations may receive the fostering 
care of government without injurious results. Independent 
administration of scientific institutions may coexist with 

^ Report of Samuel P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian 
Institution, 1887-88, p. 7. 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 69 

State aid. It is a remarkable testimony to the wisdom of 
George Washington's original idea, that Andrew D. White, 
who, when president of Cornell University, happily com- 
bined private endowments and government land-grants, 
lately suggested in The Forimi' the thought of a National 
University upon individual foundations. This thought is 
a century old, but it remains to this day the grandest 
thought in American educational history. 

George Washington, like James Smithson, placed a pri- 
vate bequest, so that the general government might extend 
to it ** a fostering hand;" but in those early days Congress 
had no conception of the duties of government towards 
education and science, although attention was repeatedly 
called to these subjects by enlightened executives like 
Thomas Jefferson, '' Father of the University of Virginia," 
James Madison, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams. 
It took Congress ten years to establish the Smithsonian 
Institution after the bequest had been accepted and the 
money received. Unfortunately George Washington's 
Potomac stock never paid but one dividend, and there was 
no pressure in those days towards educational appropria- 
tions from the United States treasury. The affairs of the 
Potomac Company were finally merged in the Chesapeake 
and Ohio Canal, which became a profitable enterprise, and 
endures to this day. What became of George Washing- 
ton's " consolidated stock " of that period, history does not 
record. Jared Sparks, Washington's biographer, thought 
the stock was " held in trust " by the new company for the 
destined university. There is probably little danger that it 
will ever be thrown upon the market in a solid block by 
the treasury of the United States, to which the stock legally 
belongs, unless the present surplus should suddenly vanish 
in armored ships and coast defences, and the general gov- 
ernment be forced to realize upon its assets for the expenses 
of the administration. 

^ The Forum, February, 1889. 



70 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

George Washington's educational schemes were by no 
means visionary. His stock in the James River Company, 
which, like the Potomac Company, he had helped to organ- 
ize, actually became productive and was by him presented 
to Liberty Hall Academy, now Washington and Lee Uni- 
versity, at Lexington, Virginia, where General Lee died 
and was buried, having served his native State, as did George 
Washington, in the capacity of a college president. Wash- 
ington raised Liberty Hall Academy to what he called " a 
seminary of learning upon an enlarged plan, but not coming 
up to the full idea of University." He meant to make it 
one of the three Virginia supporters of the University at 
Washington. Liberty Hall, or Washington College, his 
own William and Mary, and Hampden-Sidney, were all to 
be State pillars of a national temple of learning. 

Washington's dream of a great University, rising grandly 
upon the Maryland bank of the Potomac, remained a dream 
for three-quarters of a century. But there is nothing more 
real or persistent than the dreams of great men, whether 
statesmen like Baron von Stein, or poets like Dante and 
Petrarch, or prophets like Savonarola, or thinkers like St. 
Thomas Aquinas, the Fathers of the Church and of Greek 
philosophy. States are overthrown; literatures are lost; 
temples are destroyed; systems of thought are shattered to 
pieces like the statues of Pheidias; but somehow truth 
and beauty, art and architecture, forms of poetry, ideals of 
liberty and government, of sound learning and of the edu- 
cation of youth, these immortal dreams are revived from age 
to age and take concrete shape before the very eyes of 
successive generations. 

The idea of university education in the arts and sciences 
is as old as the schools of Greek philosophy. The idea was 
perpetuated at Alexandria, Rome and Athens under the 
emperors. It endured at Constantinople and Ravenna. It 
was revived at Bologna, Paris, Prague, Heidelberg, Oxford 
and Cambridge under varying auspices, whether of city, 
church or state; and was sustained by the munificence of 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 7I 

merchants, princes, prelates, kings and queens. Ideas of 
higher education were transmitted to a new world by Eng- 
lishmen who believed in an educated ministry and who 
would not suffer learning to perish in the wilderness. The 
collegiate foundations laid by John Harvard in Massachu- 
setts and Commissary Blair in Virginia were the historic 
models for many similar institutions, north and south. 
George Washington, the chancellor of William and Mary, 
when he became president of a federal republic, caught up, 
in the capital of a westward moving empire, the old uni- 
versity idea and gave it national scope. There upon the 
Potomac he proposed to found a National University, draw- 
ing its economic life from the great artery of commerce 
which connects the Atlantic seaboard and the Great West. 
As early as 1770 Washington described this Potomac route 
as ** the channel of the extensive and valuable trade of a 
rising empire." 

Was it not in some measure an historic, although an 
unconscious, fulfilment of that old dream of Washington 
when, a hundred years later, Johns Hopkins determined to 
establish upon the Maryland side of the Potomac a uni- 
versity with an economic tributary in the Baltimore and 
Ohio Railroad, which follows the very windings of that 
ancient channel of commerce? Forms of endowment may 
change, but university ideas endure. They are the common 
historic inheritance of every enlightened age and of every 
liberal mind; but their large fulfilment requires a breadth of 
foundation and a range of vision reaching beyond mere 
locality. Universities that deserve the name have always 
been something more than local or provincial institutions. 
Since the days when Roman youth frequented the schools 
of Grecian philosophy, since the time when ultramontanes 
and cismontanes congregated at Bologna, since students 
organized by nations at Paris, Prague, and Heidelberg, 
since Northern Scots fought Southern Englishmen at Ox- 
ford, university-life has been something even more than 
national. It has been international and cosmopolitan. 



72 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

Though always locally established and locally maintained, 
universities are beacon lights among the nations, command- 
ing wide horizons of sea and shore, catching all the winds 
that blow and all the sun that shines, attracting, like the 
great light-house of Ptolemy Philadelphus on the Island of 
Pharos, sailors from distant lands to Alexandrine havens, 
or speeding the outward voyager. 

Doubtless Johns Hopkins, like George Washington, had 
no very definite conception concerning the world-wide rela- 
tions of a great modern university; but he saw as clearly as 
did the Father of his Country that the beneficent influence 
of higher education, if properly endowed, must reach far 
beyond the limits of a single State. His bump of locality 
was larger than that of most founders. He made special 
provision that a part of the benefits of his institution should 
be extended over at least three great American Common- 
wealths — Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, from 
which States his first wealth as a merchant had been drawn. 
But Johns Hopkins was a railroad-king as well as a mer- 
chant-prince. He had economic interests, far and wide, 
upon land and sea. His wealth came from western as well 
as southern connections. It came with every train from 
the coal regions of Western Maryland and Virginia, with 
every cargo of wheat and corn from the grain belts beyond 
the Ohio. Johns Hopkins knew well that a great uni- 
versity, like a great railroad, must have its distant feeders, 
its through routes, and outward connections, as well as its 
local accommodations and way stations. What a joy it 
would have been to that man of large enterprise and of 
broad views to hear that the University which bears his 
name is to-day honored and respected in every European 
country, in India, China and Japan; that our university 
publications and scientific exchanges belt the globe; that 
Baltimore offers opportunities for advanced instruction 
which attract students not only from the home-States of 
Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, but from every 
section of these happily Reunited States. Practical business 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 73 

man that he was, he would have recognized with the quick 
instinct of a far-seeing mind and with the shrewd sagacity 
of a student of railroad reports, the significance of the fol- 
lowing statistics, patiently gathered by a student^ who 
abandoned even a government office in the treasury depart- 
ment of the United States for the sake of studying at the 
Johns Hopkins University. 

The Baltimore public has been accustomed to see or 
hear some new thing every year with regard to the number 
of students from this city, from Maryland, Japan, and each 
individual State of the American Union. The following 
facts represent a novel grouping of students according to 
the great sections of country from which they come. There 
have been some misapprehensions in our community con- 
cerning the region benefited by this university. Our new 
arrangement of statistics shows that during the present year 
there have been studying at this institution 98 graduates 
from the South, 47 from the West, 26 from the Middle 
States, 18 from New England. It is plain that this uni- 
versity is drawing college men from the same sources as 
those from which John Hopkins drew his wealth, namely, 
from the South and West. In the undergraduate depart- 
ment there are now 139 students from the South, 18 from 
the West, 14 from the Middle States, and 4 from New Eng- 
land. Plainly, most of " our boys " come from the same 
sections of country as our graduates. The sum total of 
men from the South is 237; from the West, 65; from the 
Middle States, 40; from New England, 22. In short the 
South has more than three and one-half times as many 
representatives as the West, six times as many as the Mid- 
dle States, and more than ten times the number from New 
England. The total number from all the other States com- 
bined is nearly doubled by the South.^ About one-half of 

^ W. B. Shaw, subsequently connected with the State Library at 
Albany and compiler of the bulletins showing from year to year 
a comparative summary of State legislation. 

^ For the current year, 1898, the numbers are: from the South 
370, from the West 91, from the Middle States 52, from New 



74 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

our entire student public comes from the State of Maryland. 
Considerably more than one-half comes from the three 
Southern States which Johns Hopkins wished especially to 
benefit. From this brief review of statistical facts, four 
points are clear: First, the intent of our founder has been 
realized; Second, the South and the West are chief sources 
of our student-supply; Third, in these directions are the 
lines of least resistance and greatest influence for the Johns 
Hopkins University; Fourth, one-half of our student public 
comes from other States than Maryland, a fact indicating 
that the local idea is happily balanced by the national idea. 
There are pleasing evidences of internationality in the 
life and influence of the Johns Hopkins University. Some 
of our professors came hither from England and Germany, 
as did the professors whom Thomas Jefferson introduced 
into the University of Virginia. Almost all the members 
of our faculty have studied at one time or another in 
European institutions. The annual register for 1888 shows 
twelve students from Canada, seven from Japan, and one 
representative from each of the following countries: China, 
England, Germany, Mexico, Italy and Russia. Here is a 
New Year's greeting to the president of the university from 
four of our Japanese graduates now holding educational 
posts in their native country: ** Mr. Sato being in town 
[i. e., Tokio, the capital of the Japanese Empire], we four 
Johns Hopkins University men had a dinner together, and 
talked over the good times we had in Baltimore. We 
thought we would send greetings to you and remind you 
that in this distant East there are some who remember 
J. H. U. with gratitude and affection, and who wish every 
success to the university. Signed, Kuhara, Mitsukuri, Sato 
and Motora." Mitsukuri is professor of biology in the 

England 42. This year the South has over four times as many- 
representatives as the West, over seven times as many as the 
Middle States, and about nine times the number from New Eng- 
land. The number of students from the South is, as it was ten 
years ago, double the number of students from all the other 
States. 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 75 

University of Tokio, and Sato is acting president of his 
alma mater, the Imperial College at Sapporo, and at the 
same tim^e he is confidential secretary of the governor of the 
Province of Hokkaido. From the local government board 
of that province there came this very year two officials to 
study American local institutions at the Johns Hopkins 
University. This mission was at the instance of Dr. Sato, 
who, when he was in Baltimore, wrote a doctor's thesis 
upon the " History of the Land Question in the United 
States," ^ a monograph which, in the opinion of a scholarly 
Senator in Washington, contains the best existing account 
of the famous Ordinance of 1787 for the government of 
the old Northwest Territory. Since Webster's famous de- 
bate with Hayne of South Carolina, that Ordinance has 
been the subject of historic dispute. When Japanese con- 
tribute to the enlightenment of American statesmen, upon 
American history, let us not begrudge foreigners a share 
in Baltimore academic training. They pay for the privilege 
in honest work or good money, and set all American stu- 
dents a good example in not asking something for nothing. 
What becomes of our native born when they graduate 
from the Johns Hopkins? Have they as good a record as 
the Japanese? As far as heard from, none of our American 
graduates have become college presidents;^ but, like the 
great American people, we have a good deal of presidential 
material constantly on hand, and can supply demands on 
short notice. When Clark University, up there on the 
Massachusetts and New Hampshire frontier, wanted an 
administrative head, the Johns Hopkins promptly sent one 
of its best professors for the important office. That pro- 
fessor, when he set out upon his missionary undertaking, 

^ Johns Hopkins University Studies, vol. IV, Nos. 7-8-9. 

^ Since 1889 four Hopkins men have become college presidents: 
John H. Finley, now President of Knox College, Galesburg, 
Illinois; Albion W. Small, sometime President of Colby University, 
Waterville, Maine, and now Professor of Sociology in the Univer- 
sity of Chicago; C. H. Chapman, President of the University of 
Oregon, Eugene, Oregon; and G. W. Smith, President of Colgate 
University, Hamilton, N. Y. 
6 



'^(i THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

like Augustine when he set out to convert the Anglo- 
Saxons, selected a little band of men from his own cloister, 
— devoted men, who were willing to take their lives in their 
hands and go far hence among those fierce college-tribes 
of New England. 

The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church. In the 
interests of science and the higher education, the Johns 
Hopkins University is ready at any time to throw its best 
men to the lions — to those young lions, the colleges and 
universities that are roaring with hunger in every State 
amphitheatre. Changing this bloody metaphor to a more 
humane and pleasing form, we might liken the attitude of 
this university towards all academic suitors, to that of a 
benignant father of a large family of girls in one of those 
over-populated, feminine towns of Massachusetts, towards 
a courageous young man who asked the privilege of marry- 
ing one of the numerous daughters: "Take her, my son! 
take her! God bless you! Do you know who wants another f '^ 
This is a true story, taken not from town records, but from 
family tradition in a Puritan household, where nobody is 
supposed to have ever smiled except at weddings and on 
Thanksgiving Day. 

Seriously, sympathetic friends, such is the conscious self- 
sacrifice of the Johns Hopkins University. Our dear alma 
mater is willing to give away her sons (and daughters, if 
she had them) at any time for their own best good and for 
the good of the country. When, therefore, you read in the 
newspapers that another Johns Hopkins " professor " has 
been called away (it may be noted that Hopkins graduates 
are sometimes styled " professors " even before they receive 
a call), you should greet the announcement with joy and 
not with grief. Baltimore might as well weep over the 
latest '' engagement " in society circles as to pity the Hop- 
kins for losing her men. What are we here for if not to 
train up men of learning, science and letters; to establish an 
academic exchange, a university clearing-house? What 
better policy could there be than to graduate professors as 
college-presidents, and students as professors? 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 'JJ 

Now let US consider a few facts illustrating the fate of 
some of our Hopkins graduates. The librarian of the his- 
torical department, aided by our excellent statistician, has 
prepared an object lesson for the encouragement of friends 
of higher education in Baltimore. Upon the centennial 
map of the United States he has fastened lines of white 
tape, extending from our Baltimore university-centre in 
five directions, north, south, southwest, west, and northwest. 
He has boxed the educational compass. Upon those white 
lines you will see stars; and they are of various magnitudes. 
There is a double star over the neighboring cities of Balti- 
more and Washington, like Castor and Pollux, the great 
twin brethren, the gemini in the American University 
zodiac, — 

" So like they were, no mortal 
Might one from other know; 
White as snow their armor was, 
Their steeds were white as snow. 



" Safe comes the ship to haven, 

Through billows and through gales, 
If once the great Twin Brethren 
Sit shining on the sails." 

From this brilliant stella duplex, this double beacon-light, 
whose rays shine over land and sea, a long belt of pure white 
light reaches upward to the New England polar star. Clark 
University is at present snowed under, just below the lowest 
ray of the great white planet which represents Hopkins 
academic influence in the remote North. The star is num- 
bered 12. That means there are twelve Hopkins mission- 
aries going up and down in snow shoes, preaching their 
academic gospel in those foreign parts. Four are now set- 
tled on Massachusetts Bay, in such important posts as 
Harvard University and the Institute of Technology. Two 
are teaching history and economics at Providence Planta- 
tions, where Roger Williams took refuge from his Massa- 
chusetts brethren in former days. Four more are at Mid- 
dletown, Connecticut; and others are down in Maine. New 



78 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

England once colonized the South with school-teachers 
from those over-populated towns. Baltimore is now send- 
ing a few pious monks, with St. Stanislaus Hall, to return 
the compliment. In going northward some of our men, 
four in number, got off at way stations in New Jersey. 
Thirteen penetrated as far as New York. 

Returning to Baltimore, we observe 43 men waiting 
about the corner of Little Ross and Howard Streets for 
college presidencies, university professorships, positions in 
the cabinet or in the United States treasury. Going 
over to Washington, we note that ten Hopkins men have 
already established themselves as teachers or clerks in the 
government service. Pushing southward, we see a white 
line of Hopkins colonial influence extending from Maryland 
to Florida. Southwestward and northwestward from Balti- 
more extend other lines of university colonists, stopping at 
Austin, Texas, and at Portland, Oregon, where a solitary 
Hopkinsian is shining like a lone star. Along the white 
belt the numbered stars represent the number of Hopkins 
professors and professional men in the various States. Our 
graduates are particularly numerous in the Northwest. The 
White Star line westward is a through route from Baltimore 
and Washington to the Pacific coast. It follows, in general, 
that old Potomac route, the line of the National Road and 
of the Baltimore and Ohio, the westward-moving centre of 
population and the Central and Union Pacific. It crosses 
the continent to the University of California, where we have 
three men.^ By this route our Japanese friends return to 
their own country and pass beyond our stellar horizon. By 
this route Hopkins men, like Professors Royce and Lever- 
more, who went out from Baltimore to the University of 
California, were called back, the first to Harvard, the second 
to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By this 
route a college lad came from Boulder, Colorado, to the 
Johns Hopkins University, where he was fitted for a classical 

^ Now there are four at the University of California, and thir- 
teen at the Leland Stanford Jr. University 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 79 

professorship, first in Smith College for women in Massa- 
chusetts, then in Bowdoin College for men in Maine. Such 
are the promenades of Hopkins graduates along these great 
avenues of travel from east to west and west to east. 

The effect of this system of university-exchange upon the 
country at large is beyond estimate. We see westerners 
called eastward to college positions; northerners called 
southwards; and southerners called northwards. A North 
Carolinian, trained at the University of Virginia, and after- 
wards at the Johns Hopkins, is appointed professor of his- 
tory and politics in a Connecticut university, after teaching 
the same subjects to young ladies at Bryn Mawr. We see 
a graduate of a Massachusetts college, who took his doc- 
tor's degree in Baltimore, lecturing in various colleges 
throughout the west and finally settling at Vanderbilt Uni- 
versity, in Tennessee, whence he makes a weekly trip to 
lecture in St. Louis,. We see a graduate of Harvard Uni- 
versity becoming one of our fellows in Greek, then travel- 
ling in Europe upon a Harvard fellowship, returning to 
Cambridge as an instructor, then called to be a professor of 
Greek in Bowdoin College, thence called to the University 
of Virginia, to a chair once occupied by our own Professor 
Gildersleeve. We see our first Doctor of Philosophy in the 
historical department lecturing at Michigan, Cornell, and 
Johns Hopkins Universities, all in one year, then holding 
the chair of economics in two institutions at once, one east 
and one west, with a half year in each. We see him now 
in full charge of a department at the University of Michigan 
and at the same time directing the statistical work of a 
bureau of forty clerks for the Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission at Washington. These are simply representative 
facts. They might be paralleled by dozens of examples in 
the history of our various departments of instruction. 

What do these facts mean? They mean that the Presi- 
dent and Trustees of the Johns Hopkins University have 
established here a national university upon local and indi- 
vidual foundations. They have realized the historic idea of 



80 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

George Washington, whose birthday they wisely chose for 
their Founder's Day. They have carried out Johns Hop- 
kins' will in a spirit of large philanthropy, transcending the 
boundaries of a single State and yet conserving the home 
interests of Baltimore and of the State of Maryland. 
Whether consciously or unconsciously, they have also rea- 
lized, in every essential detail, the ideal purposes set forth 
in Washington's last will and testament: They have devised 
a plan upon a liberal scale ^ which has a tendency to spread 
systematic ideas through all parts of this rising empire. 
They have established a university in this central part of the 
United States whither young men are comifig from all paints 
of the country to complete their education in all bra?iches of 
polite literature, in the arts and sciences, in the principles of 
politics and good government. By friendship and associations 
formed here in Baltimore, these young men are learnijig to 
free themselves fro7n local prejudices and sectional jealousy. 
These phrases from Washington are no longer mere ex- 
pressions of hope; they are the language of history. 

The Johns Hopkins University has by no means accomp- 
lished its mission. Its record is full of accomplished facts, 
but facts are only stepping stones to higher things. " What 
you do,'' Hopkinsians, " still betters what is done!' All his- 
tory is but the striving of man towards a better future. Our 
academic course thus far has been a constant struggle with 
difficulties and a steady advance along the line. We are 
entering now upon the grandest campaign in our university 
career. It is not a struggle for existence, like that carried 
on by Thomas Jefferson for fifty years in the interest of 
university education in Virginia, until at last, at the age of 
four score, that grand old champion of liberty and learning 
won the confidence of democracy, and established an insti- 
tution which has withstood the shocks of war and recon- 
struction. It is not a forlorn hope, like that led for many 
years by Col. Ewell, the president of William and Mary 
College, when the faculty and the students had all departed 
and he was left alone with the chapel bell and a negro serv- 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 8l 

ant, until at last one fine morning a year ago the legislature 
of Virginia awoke from its long indifTference and voted an 
appropriation of ten thousand dollars/ which set the old 
college bell to ringing again; and a Johns Hopkins man 
promptly went down to Williamsburg and took the chair 
of history. 

Our struggle is for nobler victories than any hitherto 
won. We are to grapple with existing facts and, by good 
generalship, turn them into favoring conditions for still 
greater success. As George Washington said to the trus- 
tees of William and Mary, we believe in the efforts of our 
authorities ''for placing this system of education on such a 
basis as zvill reitder it the most be7ieficial to the State and the 
republic of letter s^ as well as the more extensive interests of 
humanity and religion y 

II. 

How can the foundations of a National University, rest- 
ing upon individual endowment, be further strengthened? 
Simply by extension and more endowments of the same 
sort. A great university grows as a great city grows, by 
the individual association of property investments along 
avenues already opened. Watch the present process of 
Baltimore extension beyond its former " boundary," and 
you will realize how in time the Johns Hopkins University 
may extend beyond its original walls and possibly reach as 
far as Clifton^ with some of its buildings. There are men 
who dream of founding towns and universities apart from 
existing centres of population and capital; but he is a wise 
founder who, like George Peabody, Johns Hopkins, or 
Enoch Pratt, recognizes the vantage ground of a noble city, 
and plants there institutions which will work together 

^ Since 1888, when William and Mary College was revived, it 
has received nearly $200,000 in appropriations from the State 
and National governments. 

^ Johns Hopkins' country estate at " Clifton " was sold to the 
city of Baltimore in 1897 for $710,000. 



82 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

through coming ages. The principle holds with reference 
to individual endowments for the higher education. They 
always accomplish the most good when they are connected 
with some central foundation which gives them at once 
stability, unity and individuality, as in the associated insti- 
tutions of a large city. 

Extension by philanthropy and State aid is the manifest 
destiny of the Johns Hopkins University. There will per- 
haps be the individual endowment of a college ; perhaps of a 
university library, bearing the name of the giver, like the 
Andrew D. White Library at Cornell University; of a 
laboratory, a museum, or an observatory like those at Har- 
vard or at the University of Virginia. Some day we shall 
have an art gallery like that at Yale. What is most 
needed, however, is a central academic building and library 
to shelter fitly the " Fair Humanities," — the studies of an- 
cient and modern literature; philosophy and ethics; history, 
politics and social science.^ Baltimore, in the course of 
time, will have as many foundations, bearing individual 
names, as there are now in the older institutions of the 
country. Glance through the catalogues of Harvard, Yale, 
Princeton, or the University of Virginia, and see the great 
host of private bequests, some large, some small, but all of 
them carefully guarded and applied to specific objects, such 
as the increase of the library or the support of scholarships 
and fellowships. There may be as much individuality in a 
great university establishment as there is in a street or a city 
bearing a great man's name, like Washington Place or 
Baltimore. Probably the families living in the immediate 
neighborhood of Washington Monument do not regard the 
individuality of their own houses as lost to view in the gen- 
eral unity and beauty of this noble square with its towering 
Campanile, its Peabody Institute, its fountains and bronze 
statues, its Walters Gallery, and its Mt. Vernon Church. 

^ Since this address was delivered McCoy Hall has been erected 
and now fulfills every purpose above designated. 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 83 

This is an era of educational endowment upon a generous 
scale. The most recent pubUshed report of Colonel Daw- 
son, the Commissioner of Education, shows that the sum 
total of noteworthy educational gifts during the year 1886-7 
was nearly five million dollars. More than two-thirds of 
the entire amount were distributed among nine institutions, 
four of them collegiate, one academic, three professional, 
and one technical. The institution most highly favored was 
Harvard University,^ which received from individual sources 
nearly a million dollars. From one man came a legacy of 
$630,000. Our nearer neighbor Haverford College, sup- 
ported by the Society of Friends, received $700,000 in one 
bequest. Of the 209 gifts recorded by the Commissioner 
of Education, 25 represent $50,000 or more; 72 were sums 
between $5,000 and $49,000; and 112 were sums less than 
$5,000. The most striking fact in all this record of philan- 
thropy is that such a large proportion of the entire amount, 
fully two-thirds, was given to higher education. The year 
1888 is richer than 1887 in individual bounty to institutions 
of learning. Nearly ten millions were given by three per- 
sons for the encouragement of manual training, etc., but 
there are rumors of even larger benefactions for university 
endowment. The collective returns for 1888 are not yet 
published, but it is certain that the past year will surpass 
any hitherto recorded in the annals of American education.' 

Whatever forms modern philanthropy may take, one 
thing is certain, universities are not likely to be forgotten. 
At the founding of the new Catholic University in Wash- 
ington, Bishop Spalding said that a university " is an insti- 
tution which, better than anything else, symbolizes the aim 
and tendencies of modern life." Will not broad-minded 

^ Even richer gifts have been made in more recent years to the 
University of Chicago, the University of California, and to Colum- 
bia University. 

^ In 1895-6 benefactions to universities and colleges throughout 
the United States aggregated $8,342,728. Of this sum the Univer- 
sity of Chicago received $2,200,000. 



84 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

people in Baltimore recognize the truth of this statement 
and strengthen existing foundations? Senator Hoar, at the 
laying of the corner stone of the new Clark University, said, 
'' The University is the bright consummate flower of de- 
mocracy." Will not American patriots cultivate endow- 
ments made by the generosity of sons of the people? Are 
the noble gifts of Johns Hopkins for the advancement of 
learning and the relief of suffering likely to be forgotten by 
present or future generations? All history testifies to the 
gradual up-building of universities by individual benefac- 
tions. The development of European and American col- 
leges is one long record of private philanthropy. It is not 
possible that this generous and appreciative city of Balti- 
more, this State of Alaryland, will fail to encourage and de- 
velop an institution which already in thirteen years has edu- 
cated 770 of its choicest youth, many of whom are now con- 
spicuous for their good citizenship and active labors in 
behalf of this community. This city of Baltimore surely 
contains individuals with discernment enough to recognize 
accomplished facts and with generosity and wisdom enough 
to encourage higher education in Maryland in ways that will 
do the most good.^ 

While the Johns Hopkins University undoubtedly has 
most to expect from private philanthropy, like that which 
has already built up the city, it is not beyond the bounds 
of possibility to hope that the State of Maryland may some 
day extend to our institution what George Washington 
modestly called a *' fostering hand." At present this State, 
by the exercise of its taxing power, takes from the Johns 
Hopkins the sum of nearly $11,000 and from the Johns 
Hopkins Hospital the sum of $33,000 a year. From our 
original patrimony Baltimore County took a collateral in- 
heritance tax of $36,000. The power to tax is sometimes 
called the power to destroy. Surely Maryland would not 

^ The total number of Maryland boys who have received 
academic training at the Johns Hopkins University is now nearly 
one thousand four hundred. 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 85 

willingly subvert or impair educational foundations that 
were laid for the benefit of her own sons and citizens with- 
out reference to creed or nationality. The Baltimore pub- 
lic and the Baltimore press only need to consider fairly the 
facts and principles in the case to become, if necessary, the 
champions of this University in the State legislature.^ 

The exemption of college property, even the property of 
professors, from taxation was well-nigh the universal cus- 
tom in the English colonies of North America. To this 
day, Maryland exempts from taxation all buildings, furni- 
ture, equipments and libraries of incorporated educational 
or literary institutions, with the land appertaining to them — 
in other words, all unproductive property actually in use for 
educational purposes. This principle of exempting the 

' From a recent official statement it appears that the Johns 
Hopkins University has paid in State and City taxes a total sum 
of $242,705.64. In this connection may be noted the purchase 
by the University from the State of about $1,000,000 in the pre- 
ferred stock of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, for which $125 
per share was paid to the State. Upon this stock the University 
has already lost in unpaid dividends the sum of $120,000, which 
has been saved by the State. If this loss should prove permanent, 
an annual loss of $60,000 (that would otherwise have been 
assessed upon the taxpayers of the State) must be borne by the 
University. The high price paid for this stock indicates the 
opinion generally held by the authorities of the State and of the 
University (long after the embarrassment of the raih"oad com- 
pany was well known) that the Act of the State making this 
stock a first charge upon the gross revenues of the road was a 
valid one. In this faith, the sum of nearly $1,250,000 was received 
by the State, and now, by the decision of the U. S. Circuit Court, 
the income upon this great sum is suspended and possibly lost 
by the University. 

The Baltimore Sun, March 23, 1898, said: Of course, none of 
these facts constitute a legal claim against the State. But we sub- 
mit they lay the foundation for a strong moral claim. Can the 
State afford to profit by the loss of a great and noble institution, 
founded for no private profit, but for great and useful public pur- 
poses, which it faithfully subserves, and which is equally an honor 
and a material advantage to the State ? The University to-day is 
simply in the unfortunate position in which the State itself would 
have been but for the University's trust and confidence in the 
State eight years ago. 



86 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

property of institutions of learning is so thoroughly embed- 
ded in the constitutional, statutory and customary law of 
almost every State in the American Union that such exemp- 
tion may be recognized, like the principles of Roman Law, 
as sovereign common sense. But some American States go 
much farther and exempt the productive property of colleges 
and universities, their savings and investments, the income 
of which is applied to educational objects. The personal 
property and real estate belonging to educational institu- 
tions are exempt from taxation in each of the following 
States: Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, Virginia, Kentucky, 
Kansas, Louisiana, and Nebraska, and probably in others 
whose statutory laws permit exemption but whose customs 
and policy vary. 

Exemption from taxation is a manifest duty which the 
State of Maryland owes to an institution which is now 
using all the income from its productive capital, as well as 
its buildings, books, and apparatus, for the higher educa- 
tion of Maryland youth. Indeed, one might go farther and 
say that the Johns Hopkins is doing for Maryland what 
most States endeavor to secure by large annual appropria- 
tions. This institution is to-day discharging the functions 
of a State University and is paying for the privilege of pro- 
viding what is usually regarded as the duty of the State to 
provide. 

The encouragement of higher education by government 
aid, in one form or another, has been a recognized principle 
of public policy in every enlightened State, whether ancient 
or modern. Older than the recognition of popular educa- 
tion as a public duty was the endowment of colleges and 
universities at public expense for the education of men who 
were to serve church or state. It is a mistake to think that 
the foundation of institutions by princes or prelates was a 
purely private matter. The money or the land always came 
from the people in one form or another, and the benefit of 
endowment returned to the people sooner or later. Popu- 
lar education is the historic outgrowth of the higher educa- 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 87 

tion in every civilized country, and those countries which 
have done most for universities liave the best schools for the 
people. It is an error to suppose that endowment of the 
higher learning is confined to Roman and German em- 
perors, French and English kings. Crowned and un- 
crowned Republics have pursued the same public policy. 
Indeed, the liberality of government towards art and science 
always increases with the progress of liberal ideas, even in 
monarchical countries like Germany, where, since the intro- 
duction of parliamentary government, appropriations for 
university education have greatly increased. The total 
cost of maintaining the Prussian universities, as shown by 
the reports of our Commissioner of Education, is about two 
million dollars a year. Only about nine per cent, of this 
enormous outlay is met by tuition fees. The State contri- 
butes all the rest in endowments and appropriations. Prus- 
sia now gives to her universities more than twice as much 
as she did before the Franco-Prussian war, as shown by the 
report of our commissioner at the Paris Exposition in 1867. 
In that year France gave her faculties of higher instruction 
only $765,764. After the overthrow of the second empire, 
popular appropriations for higher education greatly in- 
creased. The budget for 1888 shows that France now ap- 
propriates for college and university faculties $2,330,000 a 
year, more than three times the amount granted under 
Louis Napoleon. Despotism is never so favorable to the 
highest interests of education as is popular government. 
Louis XIV and Frederick the Great, according to the au- 
thority of Roscher, the political economist, regarded uni- 
versities, like custom houses, as sources of revenue, for the 
maintenance of absolute forms of government. The world 
is growing weary of royal munificence when exercised at 
the people's expense, with royal grants based upon popular 
benevolence and redounding to the glory and profit of the 
prince rather than to the folk upholding his throne. Since 
the introduction of constitutional government into Euro- 
pean States, representatives of the people are taking the 



88 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

power of educational endowment and subsidy into tlieir own 
hands and right royally do they discharge their duty. The 
little Republic of Switzerland, with a population of only 
three millions, supports four State universities, having alto- 
gether more than three hundred instructors. Its cantons, 
corresponding upon a small scale to our States, expend 
over $300,000 a year upon the higher education. The Fed- 
eral Government of Switzerland appropriated, in 1887, 
$115,000 to the polytechnicum and $56,000 in subsidies to 
cantonal schools, industrial and agricultural; besides be- 
stowing regularly $10,000 a year for the encouragement of 
Swiss art. The aggregate revenues of the colleges of Ox- 
ford, based upon innumerable historic endowments, public 
and private, now amount to fully two million dollars a year. 
The income of the Cambridge College endowments amounts 
to quite as much. But all this, it may be said, represents 
the policy of foreign lands. Let us look at home and see 
what is done in our own American commonwealths. 

Maryland began her educational history by paying a 
tobacco tax for the support of William and Mary College. 
This colonial generosity to another State has an historic 
parallel in the appropriation of a township of land by Ver- 
mont for the encouragement of Dartmouth College in the 
State of New Hampshire, and in the corn that was sent from 
New Haven to the support of young Harvard. In colonial 
days Maryland had her county schools, some of them clas- 
sical like King William's School at Annapolis. All were 
founded by authority of the Colonial Government and sup- 
ported by aid from the public treasury. The principle of 
State aid to higher education runs throughout the entire 
history of both State and Colony. 

The development of Maryland colleges began on the 
Eastern Shore. In the year 1782, representatives of Kent 
County presented a petition to the legislature, saying that 
they had a flourishing school at Chestertown, their county 
seat, and wished to enlarge it into a college. The General 
Assembly not only authorized the establishment of Wash- 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 89 

ington College, which still exists, but, in consideration of 
the fact that large sums of money had been subscribed for 
the institution by public-spirited citizens of the Eastern 
Shore, resolved that " such exertions for the pubUc good 
merited the approbation of the legislature and ought to 
receive public encouragement and assistance." These are 
the very words of representatives of Alaryland more than 
a century ago. Their deeds were even better than their 
words. They voted that £1,250 a year should be paid from 
the public treasury for the support of Washington College. 
That vote was passed just after the conclusion of a long 
war with England, when the State and indeed the whole 
country lay impoverished. Towards raising this govern- 
ment subsidy for higher education, the legislature granted 
all public receipts from marriage licenses, from liquor li- 
censes, fines for breaking the Sabbath, and all similar fines 
and licenses that were likely to be constant sources of 
revenue. 

The founding of St. John's College occurred two years 
later, in 1784. This act by the State of Maryland was also 
in response to a local demand. It was urged by the citizens 
of Annapolis that King William's School, although a clas- 
sical institution, was inadequate to meet the educational 
demands of the age. It was very properly added that the 
Western Shore, as well as the Eastern, deserved to have a 
college; and so St. John's was established as the counter- 
poise of Washington College. The legislative act is almost 
identical with that establishing the earlier institution, 
although the appropriation was larger. The legislature 
gave St. John's four acres of good land for college grounds 
and building sites and an annual appropriation of £1,750 
current money. This sum, in the words of the original act, 
was to " be annually and forever hereafter given and granted 
as a donation by the public to the use of said college on the 
Western Shore, to be applied by the visitors and governors 
of the said college for the payment of salaries to the princi- 
pal, professors and tutors of said college." The establish- 



90 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

ment was to be absolutely unsectarian. Students of any de- 
nomination were to be admitted without religious or civil 
tests. Not even compulsory attendance upon college pray- 
ers was required; so modern were the legislative fathers of 
Maryland. 

The next step in the higher educational history of Mary- 
land was the federation of the two colleges into the Uni- 
versity of Maryland. The two boards of visitors and two 
representatives of each faculty constituted the University 
Convocation, presided over at Annapolis on commencement 
day by the Governor of the State, who was ex oificio chan- 
cellor of the University. One of the college presidents 
acted as vice-chancellor. Thus more than a century ago 
Maryland inaugurated a State system of higher education 
which, if it had been sustained, would have given unity and 
vigor to her academic life. But unfortunately, in 1794, the 
legislature yielded to county prejudices and withdrew £500 
from the £1,250 annually granted to Washington College 
and began to establish a fund, the income of which was dis- 
tributed among various county academies on both shores of 
the Chesapeake. This was the origin of the subsidies still 
given in one form or another to secondary institutions in 
the State of Maryland. In 1805 the remaining appropria- 
tion of £750 belonging to Washington College and the en- 
tire ii,750 hitherto granted to St. John's College were 
withheld for the avowed purpose of '' disseminating learn- 
ing in the different counties of the State." 

For six years there was famine in the land as regards the 
support of higher education. At last in 181 1 the legislature 
resumed appropriations to St. John's College. Realizing 
that it had misappropriated to local uses subsidies " granted 
annually forever " to St. John's, the legislature endeavored 
for many years to compromise by giving a smaller allow- 
ance. The Court of Appeals ultimately decided in 1859 
that such a readjustment was a breach of contract and that 
the College could collect what was due it from the State. 
There is perhaps some excuse for the economy of Mary- 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 9I 

land in its treatment of St. John's College, namely '' hard 
times." A State that went through the financial crises of 
1837 and 1857 without repudiation deserves great historical 
credit. St. John's College was suspended during the civil 
war, but appropriations were renewed in 1866 and have 
been continued, with slight variations, down to the present 
day. The amount granted in 1888 was $3,000 for the insti- 
tution itself and $5,200 for boarding twenty-five students, 
one from each senatorial district. 

The first University of Maryland ceased to exist by the 
act of 1805, which withheld appropriations from St. John's 
College; but in the year 1812 a new University of Mary- 
land was instituted by authority of the State, in the City of 
Baltimore. The proceeds of a State Lottery were granted 
to the institution, for a library, scientific apparatus, botanical 
garden, etc. The corporation was to have the full equip- 
ment of four faculties, representing the arts, law, medicine 
and theology. Two faculties of law and medicine still 
perpetuate the spirit of the founders of the University of 
Maryland, and are honorable and distinguished promoters 
of professional education. It cannot be said that they were 
ever treated with adequate generosity, though they actually 
received from State Lotteries between $30,000 and $40,000, 
and were never taxed. 

The present generation has not been so generous to the 
cause of higher education as were the Fathers of the State, 
but nevertheless, Maryland in her entire history has appro- 
priated something over $650,000 for what may be strictly 
called college education, not counting $60,000 given to the 
State Agricultural College, nor $40,000 proceeding from 
State Lotteries. While this collective bounty is small, it is 
money given by voluntary taxation and not taken from in- 
stitutions of learning. Most of the amount was raised in 
times when the State was poor or heavily in debt, and when 
public money came with difficulty. Moreover this financial 
generosity of Maryland establishes the principle for which 
we are contending, namely that this State, like all other 
7 



92 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

enlightened States in the world, has recognized the duty of 
support to higher and unsectarian institutions of learning. 
She has at different times appropriated $650,000 to colleges 
and the University of Maryland from her public treasury. 

Let us now inquire what other States in the American 
Union have done for higher education, always recognizing 
of course great inequality in State population and in the 
taxable basis. 

Virginia, whose earliest educational foundations Mary- 
land helped to lay by her tobacco-tax, has expended upon 
colleges and university over two million dollars, during 
her history as a State, not counting the colonial bounty to 
William and Mary. Since the war Virginia has given her 
University $40,000 a year. Before the war she gave $15,- 
000 a year. The original university-establishment cost the 
State about $400,000. The people of Virginia are proud 
of their University, and it would be suicide for any political 
party to cut off the yearly appropriation from the institu- 
tion founded by Thomas Jefferson. The State of South 
Carolina was Jefferson's model for generous appropriations 
to the cause of sound learning. She has given two million 
and eight hundred thousand dollars to that object. Georgia 
has given $938,000 for the same purpose. Louisiana has 
given $794,000 from her State treasury for the higher edu- 
cation in recent years and, according to the testimony of her 
own authorities, has distributed over two millions among 
schools, academies and colleges. Texas has spent upon 
college education $382,000, and has given for higher educa- 
tion two and one-quarter million acres of land. The edu- 
cational foundations, both academic and popular, in the 
Lone Star State, are among the richest in America.^ 

Turning now to the Great West, we find that Michigan 
has given over two million dollars to higher education.' 
She supports a University which is as conspicuous in the 
Northwest as the University of Virginia is in the South, 

' See " Statistics on State Aid." 
^ Now (1898) over three millions. 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 93 

Upon one-twentieth ^ of a mill tax on every dollar of taxable 
property in the State. That means half a cent on every 
hundred dollars." This University tax-rate yielded last year 
$47,272.^ Would the people of Maryland give one-tenth of 
a mill tax, or a cent on every hundred dollars of their tax- 
able property, to strengthen this University? One-tenth 
of a mill tax on the present taxable basis of Maryland, 
v^hich is $486,000,000,* would yield $48,000^ a year. Wis- 
consin pays one-eighth of a mill tax for her University, 
and that yields $74,000 per annum.^ Wisconsin has given 
for higher education $1,200,000.^ Nebraska is even more 
generous to her State University. She grants three-eighths 
of a mill tax, yielding about $60,000 a year. The State of 
California ^ grants one-tenth of a mill tax, which yielded last 
year over $76,000. Besides this, the University of Cali- 
fornia has a permanent State endowment of $811,000, yield- 
ing an annual income of $52,000, making a total of $128,000 
which the State gives annually to its highest institution of 
learning. Altogether California has expended upon higher 
education two and one-half million dollars.^ 

It is needless to give further iUustrations of State aid to 
American universities. These statistics have been carefully 
collected from original documents by one among several 
students, who are making important contributions to Amer- 
ican educational history, to be published by the United 
States Bureau of Education. The principle of State aid to 
at least one leading university in each commonwealth is 
established in every one of the Southern and Western 

^ Raised in 1894 to 1/6 of a mill. 

^ Now I 2/3 cents. 

^ In 1897 over $150,000. 

^ In 1890, $529,494,777. Now estimated to be over $600,000,000. 

^ This would now equal $60,000. 

^ The annual tax is now 17/40 of a mill on each dollar, yielding 
annually about $254,000. 

'' Up to 1897 nearly $3,000,000. 

^ For 1898 California has raised her tax to 1/5 of a mill. It is 
estimated that will add $120,000 to her yearly appropriation. 

' Up to 1897 about four millions. 



94 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

States. In New England, Harvard and Yale and other 
higher institutions of learning appear now to flourish upon 
individual endowments and private philanthropy ; but almost 
every one of these collegiate institutions, at one time or 
another, has received State aid. Harvard was really a 
State institution. She inherited only iSoo, and 320 books 
from John Harvard. She was brought up in the arms of 
her Massachusetts nurse, with the bottle always in her 
mouth. The towns were taxed in her interest, and every 
family paid its peck of corn to make, as it were, hoecake 
for President Dunster and his faculty. Harvard College 
has had more than half a million dollars from the public 
treasury of Massachusetts. Yale has had about $200,000 
from the State of Connecticut. While undoubtedly the 
most generous gifts have come to New England colleges 
from private sources, yet every one of them, in time of 
emergency, has come boldly before representatives of the 
people and stated the want. They have always obtained 
State aid when it was needed. Last year the Massachu- 
setts Institute of Technology became somewhat embar- 
rassed financially, and asked the legislature for $100,000. 
The institution got $200,000, twice what it asked for, upon 
conditions that were easy to meet. 

Can the State of Maryland and the friends of the Johns 
Hopkins ignore the abundant testimony in favor of the 
encouragement of university education, not only by exemp- 
tion from burdensome taxation, but by positive appropria- 
tions? If occasion arises, it will be proper and legitimate 
for the friends of this institution to go before the people of 
Maryland and say what is needed. Private philanthropy will 
do all it can^ but public interest demands that the State 
should do its part by throwing off needless taxes and set- 
tling for what it has already taken away. Will the State 

^ To private philanthropy the University owes: i. Three halls — 
McCoy Hall, Levering Hall, and the Women's Fund Memorial 
Building; 2. Two relief funds — one of $105,000 in 1889, and one 
in 1897 of $234,000; 3. The endowment of 2 professorships, 4 lec- 
tureships, I fellowship, 5 scholarships. 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 95 

be thus obliging? Of course not, unless public opinion and 
the Baltimore delegation to Annapolis become our cham- 
pions. How shall we influence public opinion and tax- 
payers? Tell the facts and publish them. 

There are at the present time, in round numbers, 200 
students from Maryland studying at the Johns Hopkins 
University. Supposing all those boys should go to Prince- 
ton, or Yale, or Harvard, and stay a year, at their father's 
expense? I suppose that $700 a year would be considered 
a very modest allowance at any one of these three institu- 
tions. Multiply $700 by 200, and you have the sum of 
$140,000 a year, which Maryland fathers might expend 
either in New Jersey, Massachusetts, or Connecticut. The 
chances are they would not escape so cheaply. I suppose 
it is an underestimate to say that fully one-half the above 
sum is annually saved to Maryland fathers by educating 
their boys here in Baltimore at the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity.^ 

Consider another striking fact. There are 200 Hopkins 
students from other States now living in Baltimore." It is 
a very reasonable estimate to say that these students ex- 
pend, on the average, $500 a year in this city. Living is 
certainly cheaper here than in many northern colleges, and 
vastly cheaper than at German universities. A Baltimore 
father now allows his son, who is a graduate of the Johns 
Hopkins University, $1,000 a year in Germany. Allow 
$500 annual expenditure by every student who comes to 
the Johns Hopkins from a distance. Multiply $500 by 200 
and you have $100,000 a year brought to our city by these 
outsiders. There are now 57 men upon our university 
faculty.^ It would not be surprising if most of them spent 
most of their salaries in this pleasant town of Baltimore. 
The university pays out $100,000 a year to its entire stafif 
of instructors. A somewhat careful computation has been 

^ The number of students from Maryland for 1898 is 260. 

^ In 1898 over 300. 

^ The faculty numbers to-day seventy-three. 



g6 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

made, based upon the known extravagance or reputed 
parsimony of every member of the faculty, and the result 
has been reached that at least $80,000 of this sum is paid 
back into Baltimiore hands for the current expenses of pro- 
fessorial life. Twenty thousand dollars are paid by the uni- 
versity to our fellows and scholars. It is safe to say that 
every cent of that money is spent in Baltimore. The uni- 
versity gives more than enough free tuition to balance any 
present charges upon the fellows and scholars. Besides 
all this, and counting out expenditures for books and appa- 
ratus ordered from a distance, the university pays at least 
$30,000 a year for current local expenses, for coal and gas, 
for printing our numerous journals, for wages and ofhce 
expenses. Add up these various items and you will find 
that the local expenditure by the university and its various 
members, plus the $70,000 spent and the $70,000 saved by 
Baltimore fathers in educating their sons at home, amounts 
to $370,000 a year. Reflect now for a moment that this 
institution has been in operation for 13 years. Allowing 
for fewer students and fewer professors and less general 
expenditure in earlier years, we should be safe in saying 
that the Johns Hopkins University has caused no less than 
its original endowment of three and one-half million to be 
poured into the lap of Baltimore, if we include the taxes we 
have paid and the cost of our university buildings, labora- 
tories, &c., a local investment, now valued at nearly a mil- 
lion dollars. All this has served to beautify and improve 
this city, to give instruction to its youth, pleasure and profit 
to its citizens, and labor to its workingmen. How many 
families have been attracted to Baltimore for permanent 
residence by the possibility of giving their sons a good 
university education? What does a family of culture and 
fortune expend yearly in this city? My friends, if you will 
review the whole matter, pencil in hand, after you return 
home, you will find the estimate of three and a half million 
dollars local expenditure already caused, directly or indi- 
rectly in Baltimore, by this university, a very modest esti- 
mate. 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 97 

It is a painful duty to suggest any measurement of the 
worth of a great university to a great city by the standard 
of dollars and cents. We all know in our hearts that there 
are moral, educational and scientific values beyond all esti- 
mate, — products of character, culture and research that can 
be neither bought nor sold. But we must sometimes 
appeal to heads as well as to hearts. 

Will any Baltimore tax-payer dispute the economic sig- 
nificance of three and a half million dollars expended in 
thirteen years in this city? Will Baltimore offer exemption 
to the Belt for eleven years and tax its own university for 
ever and ever? Will the City Council offer premiums and 
exemptions to foreign capital for investment here in manu- 
factures or in material industries, and impose a tax upon 
home property used for the education of Maryland youth, 
upon a business, if you please, which brings at least $400,000 
per annum into Baltimore circulation? These are consid- 
erations which the tax-payers and representatives of Balti- 
more would not utterly disregard, if properly presented and 
clearly understood. The Baltimore delegation would will- 
ingly champion the Hopkins cause before the legislature, 
if public opinion and the city press should take our side. 
The good will of the counties could be enlisted by the same 
policy as that pursued by all universities that have sought 
public aid. A free scholarship to the best candidate from 
every senatorial district of Maryland as determined by a 
competitive examination set by university authority, would 
solve the local problem and thus bring higher education 
into organic connection with the educational system of the 
State. 

Do you say that all this would lead to meddlesome inter- 
ference by the politicians? That is what everybody said 
when a university was founded by the Prussian government 
in Berlin. That is the stock argument against all State 
universities. But there stand to-day Berlin and all the Ger- 
man universities firm and untroubled upon State founda- 
tions. The whole South and the entire West are full of 



98 THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 

educational establishments by the State. Some of them, 
like the Universities of Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin, 
are beacon lights of intelligent and non-partisan administra- 
tion. Have Washington politicians done any harm to the 
Smithsonian Institution? On the contrary, they have in- 
directly increased its economic power by appropriations 
amounting to nearly two million dollars. They allow the 
Secretary of the Smithsonian to direct the expenditure of 
$220,000 a year. Congress permits the Smithsonian to be 
managed by a Board of Regents composed of distinguished 
college presidents and public men of spotless integrity. 
Amid all the changes in the Civil Service, no man has ever 
been displaced for political reasons from either the Smith- 
sonian Institution or the National Museum. These facts 
are stated upon good authority. Are, then, Washington 
politicians a superior order of beings? Not as far as re- 
ported in the newspapers or in the Congressional Record. 

There was once a seven years' famine in Egypt, but there 
were previously seven years of great plenty throughout all 
the land and much corn was stored up for food in the cities 
during Joseph's administration. Baltimore, Maryland, and 
the Johns Hopkins had a longer period of plenty before the 
lean kine began to come up out of the Potomac. Let us 
hope that there is corn enough in the store-houses of Bal- 
timore City, and in the corn-belt beyond the Ohio, to make 
all the lean-fleshed kine once more fat and well favored. 
In any case Baltimore, Maryland, and this university are all 
struggling with the same circumstances. As Benjamin 
Franklin observed about the time Charles Carroll of Car- 
rollton signed the Declaration of Independence, " Let us all 
hang together, or we shall all hang separately." 

What are the serious thoughts that have been empha- 
sized in this address upon " The Encouragement of Higher 
Education? " 

I. The Johns Hopkins is now a truly National University 
upon Local and Individual Foundations. 



THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 99 

2. This noble institution which benefits Baltimore, Mary- 
land, and the whole country, especially the South and West, 
can be strengthened most efficiently by further Local and 
Individual Endowments. 

3. The examples of history at home as well as abroad 
show that States encourage universities by wise exemption 
from burdensome taxation and by generous appropriations, 
if original endowments and private philanthropy prove in- 
adequate, 

4. The development of public opinion, based upon a 
knowledge of present facts and upon existing relations of 
this university to Baltimore and Maryland, is the best way 
to encourage Higher Education in this city, in this State, and 
in this country. 



JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 

IN 

Historical and Political Science. 

Herbert B. Adams, Editor. 

FIRST SERIES.— Local Institutions.— 1883.— $4.00. 

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v. liOcal Government in Micliigan, and tlie JVortlxwest. By E. W. Bemis. 25 cents. 

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SEVENTH SERIES.— Social Science, Education and Government 

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X. The Study of History in Belgium and Holland. By P. Fredericq. 50 cents. 
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The Johns Hopkins Press, 

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-IN- 



HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 



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The set of fifteen (regular) series is now offered, uniformly bound in 
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All business communications should be addressed to THE JOHNS HOP- 
KINS PRESS, Baltimore, Maryland. 



STATE AID 



TO 



HIGHER EDUCATION 



A SERIES OF ADDRESSES DELIVERED AT THE 
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 



BALTIMORE 
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS ^^'^^ "" 



1898 



VN A 



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